


The Tallest Sky

by withinwithout



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (Only in one chapter), Also now for the scary tags, Alternate Universe, Aromantic Character, Great British Bake Off - Freeform, I Tried, Intimidation, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mystery, Organized Crime, Sexual Content, Violence, Zayn voice: Reckless Behaviour, and obviously, i guess?, obviously, um
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-11 22:21:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 88,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7072813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withinwithout/pseuds/withinwithout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s all there is. The mud, the grass, the sheep, the hills, and the sky. The sky, the sky, the sky.</p><p>The boy with fifty grand under his floorboards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (ONE) Cecil Beaton, 1934, Hat Box

**Author's Note:**

> Well.... what on earth have I done
> 
> First of all I'm SO SORRY that this has taken so long. Once upon a time, this was a fake dating story about co-workers in an office. Then it was a story about a secret Instagram account and some deviousness smothered by a whole raft of fluff that just resolutely Wasn't Me. Now it's this, and I like it the best, although I'm rather scared it's actually a hot mess, but what can ya do. Thanks to everyone who was so nice to me whilst I was floundering, it really is more helpful than I can express :~)
> 
> Second of all, this is intended to be a light mystery of sorts that is mostly about Boys Working Through Feelings, however in parts it does get (um hopefully) deep and dramatic and I didn't want to tag some trigger warnings in fear of spoilers. **To reiterate, about two thirds of the way through the Crime Mystery element really does come to the fore. I don't want to tag a lot of stuff in case of spoilers. Please bear this in mind!** During relevant chapters I will put spoiler tags in the end notes, so you can scroll down to read those before delving in if you're worried about anything!!
> 
> Third - Harry's family are quite obviously not anything like Harry's real family. Zayn's family isn't much like his real family. This is fiction. I even changed Harry's mum's name. Just a head's up.
> 
> Fourth - I saw the bones of this idea floating around on tumblr after I started writing it on more than one fic account and for different fandoms, which made me panic that I'd somehow stolen what is probably quite a popular trope. The point is - I'm really sorry if anyone feels as though I've usurped their AU idea, but if you're like me and think THE MORE FIC THE MERRIER, please do write this and write it much better than me so I can actually enjoy it rather than sighing continuously for eight months
> 
> Lastly, the crime syndicate mentioned throughout is REAL although I changed the name because the thought of actually naming it made me squirmy. The character Dan is made up. You can read about the real crime syndicate [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerkenwell_crime_syndicate) if you're interested :~)
> 
> (PS Niall and the Great British Bake Off are somehow very involved and I quite honestly have no idea why. If you have a tendency for PEDANTRY and you are an avid watcher of Bake Off with an intimate knowledge of its production, please just allow me some creative license as I have NO IDEA what I’m doing)
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>  **When I was born the world was a far simpler place. It was all just cops and robbers. But it wasn't for me…**  
>  **My name? If you knew that, you’d be as clever as me.**  
>  \- L4YER CAKE  
> 

Harry used to hear it all the time.

It’s a turn of phrase. _Don’t believe the half of it._

When he was little, with chocolate smeared incriminatingly around his mouth as he duly protested his innocence, his mum would smile, roll her eyes, snap with such sweet, indulgent enthusiasm, ‘I don’t believe the half of it young man.’

And when he was six years old, they went away – for an adventure, he was told – a big, rattling train down to London and tea and cake at a shop on a busy road, blood red buses trundling along outside as they sat under twinkling chandeliers. They were assaulted with dessert trollies, smothered by actual cloth napkins, the kind that need washing in a machine. Harry got told off for calling them serviettes.

They left without paying. Off to catch their train, quick now. Mum took his hand and waltzed straight out, clattered off down the big street with the big buses and big men with big, important briefcases and big ladies with big heels and big signs and lights and noise and smoke and clamour and clatter and energy and danger and –

‘That’s naughty, Mama,’ said Harry.

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Who says?’

He took a quiet moment to consider. ‘The news,’ he supplied vaguely.

‘Don’t believe the half of it,’ she said.

Now that he’s older, he finds more truth buried in that than in anything else. 

Don’t believe half. Barely believe a quarter.

_Your eyes deceive you. That’s what you’d like to hear._

Take this as a warning. 

 

-

 

‘Fresh fish,’ Niall says in a low voice. 

Harry looks up, peers through a sweep of hair that flops over his forehead and tangles with his eyelashes. Low sunlight twists his hair gold, makes him wince as he raises two muddy forearms and holds them in front of his face, casting him in shadow.

The fish trudges towards them, a blur of brown skin and inky hair, eyes cast down. He’s even skinnier than Niall, drowning in an oversized t-shirt and clunky boots, his gloves clutched in one hand. He raises them in a half wave when he realises he’s being watched, the worn leather fingers flapping flaccidly, but he doesn’t maintain eye contact long enough to see it returned.

‘How long we betting?’ Louis asks from the floor. He’s propped against a tree, crumbling boots discarded as he rolls a cigarette and watches the fish critically, chin raised, eyebrows drawn in concentration. He’s wearing that stupid Adidas t-shirt he bought from a charity shop, the one he never takes off, and it makes all the parts of Harry that enjoy nice baths and clean hair and fresh laundry cringe. He doubts it’s been washed since the charity shop gave it a half-hearted once over back in the 90s.

‘Month tops,’ Niall says with a shrug. 

Harry stands still with his arms raised above his head, shading his face, squinting at the fish. He’s stationed himself far away, past Ned the Slacker and Rosy with a Y and Andy and Dave. He watches as the fish carefully pulls on his gloves, flexing his fingers, adjusting to the thick blanket of heat, and then peers in what he probably thinks is a surreptitious way at Rosy with a Y, observing for a quiet moment before he tentatively reaches for a flaccid piece of wire and gets to work.

‘Styles?’ Louis asks from the shadow of the tree, ‘what you thinking?’

Harry swallows and lets his arms drop, face warming instantly in the wash of sunlight. He tilts his head up for just a second, eyelids fluttering shut, letting the warmth rinse over his browned, dirty skin.

And then he looks down. Back to the mud, the earth, dry and stubborn and crumbly. He remembers his first week, crying in the shower at the scorching blisters, the never-ending mud beneath his nails, the new and foreign backache. The echoing, unforgiving sound of sheep wailing that embedded itself into his brain that first weekend, when he was unfairly subjected to shearing without prior experience. He can’t remember the last time the muscles in his shoulders didn’t groan at him in the morning, whining in his ear like he’s shaking a sleeping lover from sleep. 

And that’s all there is. The grass and the sky. The sky, the sky, the sky.

Rolling hills, dirt, mud, branches that bloom and burst with green and are flayed naked when the cold washes them over. A tiny, picture-perfect town with tiny, picture-perfect pink-skinned people, miles away from metropolis, from diversity or development or drugs or disaster. 

And in the middle of it all is Harry, surrounded by his sheep, in wellies and ripped skinny jeans and t-shirts with the sleeves rolled up and held back with safety-pins.

That’s it. The mud, the grass, the sheep, the hills, and the sky. The sky, the sky, the sky.

The boy with fifty grand under his floorboards.

‘Who knows.’ He looks up, catches Niall’s eye, and grins. ‘Depends why he’s here, doesn’t it?’

Everyone has a reason. Some reasons are worse than others. 

Harry’s been in Catterlock for two years.


	2. (TWO) David Bailey, 1964, Mick Jagger - Fur Hood

_05/01/2018 . Begin – 15:23:01._

OPE: UKPPS. Hello, who’s calling?

>>>: Hello, hello, I need – I need help.

OPE: Slow down a minute, please. Who is this?

>>>: It’s uh… It’s Kit. Kit Watson.

OPE: Okay, Kit. Should I divert you to your social worker?

>>>: No it’s an emergency, please, I’m being followed.

OPE: … Being followed where, Kit?

>>>: In London. Fuck, they know where I am. They found me.

OPE: Whereabouts are you?

>>>: I – Somewhere in Hammersmith. Dunno, never been here before.

OPE: What do you see?

>>>: There’s… I can’t see fucking anything! Just roads everywhere!

OPE: Calm down. Do you see a shop?

>>>: Yeah there’s – okay, there’s a Costa.

OPE: Okay, Kit, go and sit in the Costa and we’re sending people to you right away. Stay in plain sight at all times, don’t move, don’t call anyone. Don’t act suspicious.

>>>: Fuck… okay. Okay. 

OPE: All right, Kit –

>>>: Tell Seb that I was right about Zayn Malik. Tell him I knew. 

OPE: Zayn…?

>>>: Just tell him. I knew it. I fucking knew it.

OPE: Kit –

>>>: Seb will know what I mean. He’s a fucking rat. I knew it. Tell him. 

OPE: Kit –

\---- LINE DEAD 15:25:24 ----

 

-

 

In his naive and inexperienced past, Harry had thought that farming was a humble, ill paid occupation, reserved for people with incoherent accents and missing teeth. Farmers in childhood picture books had been portly and rosy-cheeked, sat astride a fence or tractor, perhaps joined by a cheerful cow or a pint of ale. 

Bowling up to the Tomlinson farm two years ago equipped with one small suitcase and a red Eastpak which he clung to with the ferocity of a deranged person, all his preconceptions about farming were immediately torn in two, thrown back in his face rearranged precisely as nothing more than misconceptions. 

It was quite quickly apparently that Mr Tomlinson – who stuck out a worryingly, tellingly smooth hand and boomed that he must be referred to only as Tom – is very, very wealthy. The farmhouse would more aptly be described as a small mansion, the quaint sheep farm snuggled into the rolling, crayon-green Yorkshire hills more of a militaristic business empire. Since his first morning, stood wide-eyed and quaking in his wellies and skinny jeans, Harry has yet to see the farmyard of his sleepy rural fantasy – sheep bleating happily as they skip across a field, the smiling, gruff-faced farmer grunting as he trots alongside them – which somehow would have made this whole ordeal more bearable. 

Instead, looking out of Harry’s bedroom window at any given time of the day, you'd most likely spot Tom striding around in a Barbour jacket doing nothing of consequence except shouting into a Blackberry, Mrs T ferrying various small girls to and from school, Brownies or dance class in a pristine, olive coloured Land Rover, or Louis, their eldest and only son, fucking around with Liam, his friend from university. It only took Harry four days of waking up at the arse-crack of dawn and slaving away up to his elbows in sheep crap all day to understand that 'farm hand' actually meant 'farm slave', and that 'a willingness to get down and dirty' as advertised actually meant 'someone who is capable of doing absolutely everything without complaint'. Harry was not born a farmer, has no instinctual skill with animals, has little to no understanding of the wool market, but none of this seems to matter. He smiles and gets on with it. And that’s that. 

At least things got better once Niall arrived, six months after Harry started. His only company before then had been Louis and Liam, who are inherently nice but try their best to be regularly abhorrent. Besides smoking copious amounts of weed and graffiting swear words and tits and badly drawn marijuana leaves into the walls of the barn, they spend their days planning their post-Uni gap year (three years after graduating), driving the tractor in large circles, and making jam. 'This is what's gonna make me the next Alan Sugar,' Louis shouts to nobody as Harry slouches in, covered in mud and aching from head to toe. In a generous guess, whilst eyeing Harry with suspicion and disgust, Louis pours half a packet of sugar into a bubbling pot of strawberries. 'Conserves are the future,' he says happily, as Liam samples the latest creation with a teaspoon and promptly gags into the bin.

What either of them did at uni remains a mystery – Liam once mentioned his halls of residence being in the 'arsehole of Sheffield’, and surrounding Louis there are whispers of the word 'drama' and a shuddered mumble which sounds an awful lot like 'polytechnic' from Tom, but it needn't matter as Louis will inherit the farm and hire someone like Harry to do all the work anyway. 

Still, Harry likes the farm. It's home now. He loves the sloping fields and the view from his little bedroom. He and Niall share a tiny flat at the top of the house, breathing in a dusty, lingering air of servitude, and from up there he can watch the sun dip behind the hill like a sinking buoy in the evening. He loves the sheep – adoring, reliably mute, endearingly idiotic – and he loves the sheepdog Bess, who is probably too old and ill-tempered to be a service dog but does so begrudgingly if Harry coaxes her with enough desperation. He loves that Mrs T fixes him and Niall, and the other farmhands like Rosy with a Y who traipse up from the village every morning, homemade, motherly lunch: thick crusted bread sandwiches and slices of cake and, on Fridays, a Kit Kat. He loves the creak and groan of the old house, the familial sounds of laughter and shouting and the constant, leaking smell of cooking, drifting up the oak stairs to the attic. He loves that the house is full of stuff; books and pictures and shoes and toys and hairbands and novelty plasters and souvenirs and junk mail and takeaway flyers, all evidence of life, of living, of belonging.

He loves that it’s home to a lot of people, even if he hovers on the periphery, not actually a part of it. He loves that the feeling of love and comfort is close, tangible, even if he’s not actually meant to touch it.

It could be a lot worse.

Still, sometimes as the townie farmers file off, grimy and aching, and Harry lingers in the field gazing at the curve of the horizon, the half-hearted belch of the setting sun, he can’t quite convince himself. In this light, it looks so untouched, almost Biblical in its purity. _Who needs anything else?_ he says inwardly, and it takes a lot of effort to ignore the part of himself that whispers, _Me._

 

-

 

The Friday after the fish arrives, Harry lies back and nibbles around the outside of the Kit Kat, scratchy grass tangling with his hair as he hums Lou Reed and watches him. In the least creepy way possible, he’s nice to watch. Aesthetically pleasing, he’s thought to himself privately many times, as he scans the wide shoulders and cat-like nose and long, dusty eyelashes. All of his clothes are too big for him and he sits on his own at lunch, looking pensive as he buries his nose in a book and stoically picks the ham out of his sandwich. He has headphones in, bopping his head in a way he probably thinks looks cool, but he looks like a bit of a loser. Harry likes that. 

‘Why’s the fish so rude?’ Louis asks, voice all nasal and strung out, as though he hopes the fish will hear him.

‘Just shy, probably,’ says Liam admonishingly.

‘He’s quite fit,’ Harry says with a nod into the grass, tongue darting over the braille ‘K’ on the stripped bare biscuit. 

‘Yeah, and he knows it too,’ Louis snaps, mouth full of the Quavers he nicked from his mum’s treat drawer in the kitchen. ‘Did you see he turned up here the other day wearing a Misfits t-shirt? Get over yourself.’

Not for the first time, Harry silently wonders why Louis and Liam have nothing better to do.

‘Harry wears skinny jeans everyday,’ Niall points out, nudging Harry’s hip with his foot. ‘Surely that’s not suitable farming attire, Lou.’

‘Harry is ridiculous and a joke,’ Louis says immediately, completely deadpan. ‘He’s an exception.’

Harry licks the last of the chocolate off the Kit Kat and props himself up on his elbows. The fish is reading again, book balanced on the crossbar of his pretzelled legs, chin resting on his fist. His skin is half-glowing in the sunlight, the hair on his arms glistening like shards of crystal. He looks like a painting.

‘Anyone know where he lives?’ Harry asks, thumbing at a smudge of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. ‘Not at the B&B is he?’

‘Nah,’ Niall says. ‘Saw Meredith yesterday when I went into the village, she didn’t mention it.’

‘You on the prowl, Styles?’ Louis probes gleefully, waggling his eyebrows at Harry.

Harry grins impishly, cheeks heating only slightly. He gives one of his shrugs, schooling his face into something smooth and smug, and graciously says, ‘Fuck off.’ 

He watches the fish until lunch is over. Louis and Liam spent the duration of it ribbing Niall about his lack of sexual enterprise, and he can’t bear to hear it – it makes his heart feel thin and elasticky, like pulling on a strawberry lace and waiting for it to snap. So he watches the fish, unthinkingly smiling when the fish sneezes into the crook of his elbow, nose wrinkling.

‘Next time we drive to Hull,’ Louis promises as they all stand, pointing right in Niall’s face with a muddied finger and grinning gleefully, ‘we’re getting you laid. No exceptions, all right?’

Harry looks up sharply at Niall who looks pale as he meets his eye, blue irises insipid like dishwater. The tension in the air exists only between the two of them, and as they trudge back through the yard, Harry marvels not for the first time at the visceral properties of a secret, how it can warp the whole world and only those who are privy to it will notice. 

He worms an arm around Niall’s waist once Louis and Liam have loped off to their smoking spot by the barn, pulling him close into his side. The air is tight around them, blue cotton sky heavy as Niall blinks at the ground.

‘You okay?’ he asks gently, squeezing his fingers over Niall’s hip.

Niall smiles, shrugging. ‘It is what it is,’ he says.

And most of the time, that’s it. Niall is unapologetically, privately, quietly himself. He smiles more than he speaks and laughs so loud you can probably hear the echo of it in neighbouring countries. He brushes off negativity like lint, with the ease and disinterest of somebody who gave up caring about things that could make him unhappy long ago.

Harry devotes himself to studying the way the dust kicks up under his feet, nodding like he understands.

 

-

 

Harry’s idling by the gate with Bess, watching as the fish unlocks a rusty-looking bike with a scraped orange frame and curved handlebars, headphones stuffed in again and a cigarette dangling between dry lips. There’s something so odd about him against the pastoral backdrop of fields and skies – something incongruous, like a continuity error in a film. Harry wonders where he’s from. The wash of the city hangs over him like a sheet, drapes around his shoulders, and Harry blinks at him and thinks of London. 

Bess huffs at his side and presses her nose impatiently into the back of his knee with enough force that he buckles. ‘Fuck off, you,’ he says, patting her on the head, but he can’t help but turn back to the fish. He has a face that demands attention – all lines, straight and sharp and traceable. When Harry swallows, his spit feel stickier.

If the fish feels the weight of Harry’s stare, he doesn’t give in to it. Harry suspects being that gorgeous must feel heavy, always carrying the hefty knowledge that you’re being constantly watched tightly against your chest, and it’s quite telling, really, that Harry would pay money to know what that feels like. If they sold that feeling in shops, to pour over your cornflakes or dust over your cheeks like setting powder, Harry’d buy the lot. Have a whole cupboard full of it, stacked with it, like some golden homemade pharmacy. Overdose on it. 

Instead, he’s invisible.

He feels the warmth of a hand on his shoulder, and when he turns, Niall lifts a dirty hand and rubs his thumb over Harry’s eyebrow. ‘What’s the plan for tomorrow?’

Harry’s sloppy smile lifts higher. ‘Back to the cliff. Wanna try again.’

Niall lets out an exasperated sigh. ‘Haz. You’re crazy.’

But he doesn’t say no.

‘You love me anyway.’

‘You wish.’ 

They laugh in the sunshine, and Harry tucks the memory away – Niall in the light – for times he feels sad.

The sun breaks through the last barricade of the clouds and it’s suddenly so bright he can’t see a thing, a harsh glint against his constricted pupils. Everything’s smoke and mirrors, isn’t it – he’s thought that before. He blinks himself into clarity at the sound of Louis’ blaring car horn and Liam yelling ‘ _get in, bitch!_ ’ like Regina George, shaking his head as though emerging from a dream.

‘Where are we going?’ Niall asks. Bess cowers behind Harry’s legs – she hates cars, particularly this off-road beast that Louis drives as though at the wheel of a dodgem car, wilfully smashing into anything he can – and Harry scratches behind her ears apologetically.

‘My dad said he saw a dead fox on the side of the road!’ Louis says, with the same enthusiasm as Harry imagines of those announcing the discovery of the Magna Carter. ‘Bring the stupid dog, then, Styles, we don’t have all day!’

Harry feels like somebody’s watching him, but as he yanks open the car door and glances over his shoulder, all he can see is the fish’s back as he skids off down the lane. Back to town. Away from the sun.

 

\- 

 

The wind buffets into Harry’s face so hard it stings like a slap. His hair is too short to properly whip backwards like a period drama heroine, but the close cut bits that curl behind his ears smack against his neck. His eyes burn with salt.

‘Haz,’ Niall shouts from behind him, doubt trickling into his voice, but Harry ignores him. He shuffles closer to the edge, the soles of his trainers unsteady as they balance on the uneven rock. 

The sun is low, dangling like a yoke waiting to be pricked with a pin so it’ll burst bright orange all over the sky. The clouds are few and straggly, torn apart pieces of cotton, stringy enough to floss with, sweet enough to swallow. It makes Harry want to bite a hole in the sky.

‘Not yet,’ Harry breathes. It’s very melodramatic, but he’s been so caught up – so overwhelmed by day in day out of sheep shit, of the monotony of anonymity, of feeling so suddenly lonely the sheets feel like they’re strangling him. The sea is so big, so vast, the sky a huge, never-ending mirror hanging above it. He sees the tease of a wave, miles away, bigger than he is – he sticks his tongue out to taste it. 

‘Haz, babe, come back from the edge –’

‘We’re cliff jumping, you idiot,’ Harry laughs, turning back to Niall. His foot slips as he spins, and a stone bounces off the edge, tumbles down the cliff-face. It makes an almost unbelievably big splash as it breaks the surface of the water. Niall winces. ‘It’s fun!’

‘I think I changed my mind again,’ Niall says, louder because Harry’s ignoring him, yanking off his t-shirt and tucking it into the pocket of his jeans. Niall eyes the scar on Harry’s hip briefly, before Harry covers it with his forearm and turns around. He peers over the edge – froth, like the head of a pint, gathers where cliff meets sea.

‘It’s not that far.’

‘It’s pretty fucking far.’

Harry closes his eyes, takes a breath. The hair on his arms is standing and his stomach is quivering. Summer breeze stings against his neck, like the bite of a kiss.

There’s a build up of something in his chest, a sneeze, a cough, the tingle of an orgasm, pulling and stretching and –

‘Fine. I’ll do it without you.’

– jumping. He’s going to jump. 

He bends to undo his laces. 

‘No!’ Niall gasps, flinging himself forward. His hand closes around Harry’s bare bicep, nails digging into his skin. ‘Please don’t. I’m scared.’

Harry blinks up at him. He’s endeavoured to rope Niall into a lot of stupid shit before – hiking to the most easterly point of England in torrential rain, driving down the country lane drunk just for the thrill of it, climbing onto roofs and up trees and into caves and abandoned barns and spooky looking churches. Niall does it all with exasperated good-will, because he’s not a coward, and he likes the look Harry gets when he does something like that – something that makes his pulse double, beat itself red raw to match the desperate ache of his bruised heart. The way his eyes widen, shine, the way the jagged line of his mouth curves into a smile. He gains so much life. 

Niall’s the bravest person Harry knows. And he’s scaring him.

‘Okay,’ Harry says. He squeezes Niall’s hand tightly. ‘Sorry.’

‘Another time,’ Niall says doubtfully. ‘When the wind’s quietened down.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ says Harry with a nod. 

‘Let’s – shall we go to the pub?’ Niall asks, his answer for everything. He’s not letting go of Harry, as though he might sprint and throw himself off the edge the moment Niall stops holding on. 

Harry looks back wistfully at the edge as they move away – with every step, his heart feels as though it’s being wrapped in clingfilm, squeezing it tighter and tighter and tighter until it’s numb.

‘Yeah, okay.’

 

-

 

The pub is warm and wet and loud, the same, and Louis and Liam are drunk, and Harry is bored. 

Niall knows, because best mates can read each other’s minds, that’s what they do, and he buys Harry another drink and a packet of crisps. ‘Stay sweet, Kit Kat,’ Niall says, squeezing Harry’s knee, and Harry smiles with tight lips. Even so, Louis launches into a story about wearing the same underpants for almost a week – ‘that’s why they made them reversible!’ – and Harry has to stop himself from screaming with every sip.

He stares at the couple flirting over by the bar, her stood between his legs as he perches on a bar stool, their fingers grazing as she smiles down at him with cherry-stained lips. He gazes up at her with such adoration Harry almost has to look away, but he’s a masochist and he loves love and he stares at them until he can feel the pain of it in his chest. That’s what it’s like, watching love from the outside, the voyeuristic, cutting thrill of pressing your nose against glass and peering through the fog of your own breath. She brushes her lips against his forehead and the glass cracks against Harry’s palms, shatters against his face, and it hurts. It’s sweet and simple and it aches like toothache, and it’s everything he’s never had and all he’s ever wanted, and even though it hurts, he turns his face to the shower of jagged glass, embraces it gladly. It’s only real if he feels himself bleed. 

He leaves without drama or preamble after he’s finished his pint, loping home in the dark with his hands in his pockets and stopping only to say hello to Frank, his horse friend who lives in the paddock next to the greengrocers. 

Frank gazes back at him, gives a comfortingly horsey snuffle as a means of hello, and Harry loops his arms around his neck and presses his nose into his mane, closing his eyes.

He considers the possibility of Max, the rich wanker two villages over who Harry occasionally sucks off. It’d inevitably lead to Harry having to listen patiently for two hours to Max’s insistence that he’s very, unwaveringly straight, but maybe it’d be worth it if Max lets him stay.

Max never lets him stay, even though Harry always tries. At home he faces the cold of an empty bed, but there – he could sleep beside someone and feel himself be warmed by skin on skin, by the gentle wash of another person’s breath against his mouth. Even just the possibility of it has his heart softening like chewing gum, squashing close behind his ribs.

He presses a kiss to Frank’s muzzle, and the sound of his accompanying snort carries through the sleeping village in the way a car horn might in a city. Harry smiles, turning, and blanches in shock when he notices that there’s someone there. 

The fish sat cross-legged on a wall overlooking the sea front, face lit by the burning end of his cigarette. Watching him.

It’s unmistakably him – although illuminated in reluctant strands of orange and white, he definitely looks different. Less hard and untouchable. They blink at each other, eyes locked, separated by enough space to park a bus, and although Harry raises an awkward hand to wave hello, the fish doesn’t wave back.

There’s no reason why his heart jackhammers all the way home. It beats so fast it’s like it’s jumping, reaching for his throat as though trying to climb out of his mouth. The moon is cold and distressingly distant against his skin as it follows him back, through the heavy front door which he checks is shut five times, and up, up, up the huge, sleeping house to his room, seeping through the curtains he didn’t bother to close properly.

On his knees, he flings back the Persian carpet – fake, made in Macclesfield – and digs the bitten, dirty edges of his nails into the crack in the floorboards, ripping it up. 

The bag is still there. Faded red, crumpled, but still there. He feels relieved, lungs swelling with the strength of helium, even though he knew it would be. 

Harry sets the floorboard back in place carefully, smoothing the rug over the top. _You don’t need to do this every night,_ he says internally, berating himself. 

He clambers into bed naked, Bess snoring at the foot of his bed, and now that his heartbeat has calmed, stroking against his ribcage as though soothing his body to sleep, he notes that he barely feels alive at all. 

 

\- 

 

Harry's voice is so gentle when he first speaks that he has to clear his throat to catch his attention. ‘Hey, fish,’ he says again when the fish looks up at him, eyes wide and endlessly brown and full of confusion. 

‘Hi,’ the fish says slowly, blinking at him with a blank lack of understanding. His fingers clench around the box of eggs they’ve both reached for, arm extended awkwardly.

Harry hadn’t been entirely impressed when Liam dragged his sleep-deprived body out of bed this morning and shuttled him out of the door, ignoring Harry’s protests as he rabbited on about the protein omelettes he found on Jamie Oliver’s website. 

‘Why can’t you or Lou drive to get them?’ he asked, groaning, but Liam just pouted and gave a manipulative flex of his gorgeous arms as he ran a hand through his hair. Harry indulged in a second of platonic admiration before looking away.

History has proved there’s no resisting Liam’s arms. 

The fish stares at him. Silence leaks between the boxes of cereal and lies between them like spilled milk.

Harry can’t help but reach up a hand to rearrange his hair, holding his breath as the fish looks at him with unwavering eyes, taking in the sleep Harry knows has dusted at the corners of his eyes, the crust of toothpaste at the edge of his mouth. He knows what he looks like – dishevelled, sleep worn, messy – and this close, he knows what the fish looks like. Unreal, mostly.

He looks like he’s been crafted by angels out of expensive, intricately designed playdough, soft and eyes and sleep-rumpled hair, thick eyebrows raised in what Harry hopes is interest, pillowy mouth set. Harry almost wants to touch him to see if the sharp lines of his nose, his cheekbone, his jaw, squash under his fingertips.

‘All right?’ he asks instead.

The fish nods, just once.

The silence is broken by the hum of the cheap lighting above them, the sound of the bell ringing as an old lady leaves and another enters. They cluck _hello_ s that reverberate over the plastic shelving. It’s the only shop in the village open on a Sunday, and this is the last packet of eggs.

‘This is awkward,’ Harry supplies, fiddling with his hair again before snatching his arm away, because the fish is definitely noticing. 

‘Is it?’

‘I believe we’re both gunning for the last carton of eggs right now.’ He grins, eyes flickering to carton that the fish is still holding onto for dear life. The fish wrinkles his perfect nose, the corner of his perfect mouth quirking up, and Harry’s actually a bit breathless, standing there in his holey t-shirt and holey skinny jeans next to a sort of golden deity. The fish looks at the eggs, a little blearily, like he can’t believe he’s dragged himself to the village on a Sunday either, and Harry smiles at nothing, or maybe he’s smiling at his own fortune, because this just proves the fish isn’t some mirage on the other side of the field. They’re sharing the same corner shop air, stale with the woody smell of newspapers and cardboard boxes, and he’s pretty sure that after a lifetime of gawking at every hot person he sees – on the bus, in a restaurant, at a bar, on a train platform – he’s never seen someone like this. He’ll never see someone like this again.

‘Looks that way,’ the fish says, his _th_ coming out like _d_. Very Northern; Yorkshire like everyone else around here, although with a harder edge. He still hangs onto the egg box. ‘Think I got here first, though.’

Harry’s smile broadens inexplicably, pulling against his cheeks. ‘Well, there’s nobody to be the judge of that.’

‘You can take my word for it then,’ the fish says, and before Harry can think of something else clever to say, the fish scoops the eggs off the shelf and strides off towards the counter. 

‘Hang on,’ Harry says with a frown, tripping after him. ‘Wait –’ 

He expects the fish to keep walking, but he stops, turning to Harry patiently, doing as he’s told. Harry notices his t-shirt is rumpled like his hair and has a naked girl on the front, and Harry almost wants to laugh except it’s not actually funny in the way it would be on every other straight boy who buys shirts like this from Topman and hopes they look ironic. It looks good on him; arty, almost. Arty-cliché. Arty-desperate.

Harry suspects the fish would look good in a bin bag.

‘Uh. I’m Harry,’ Harry offers dumbly, immediately wanting to hit himself. He’s not good at introductions. There’s lingering shyness from a childhood of interrupted stories and calling out incorrect answers in Science with Mr Kielty, but he used to make himself swallow it because unsure and subdued has always seemed synonymous with boring to him. Now, he’s not sure who he is.

Louis says he has a ‘ _friendly, open face. Like a cow_ ’. Most of the time, he hopes that tides him through.

‘Zayn,’ the fish says, nodding. His voice isn’t exactly pleasant, but it’s open, unguarded, and Harry likes that. He asked him to wait and he did. He gave Zayn his name and Zayn gave his back.

Zayn looks down at the gaping hole in Harry’s jeans almost shyly, eyelashes shielding him, but his mouth is twitching like he’s trying to hold the corners down. ‘Not fish.’

‘What?’

‘My name’s not fish.’

Harry just blinks at him, and then barks out a laugh. ‘Oh – no, that’s not – that’s not just for you. It’s what we call all the new village hands. A newcomer thing. You know, _fresh fish?’_

He mimes shaking bars of a prison cell, and the fish – no, _Zayn_ – stares at him, eyebrows raised, mouth still trembling. He shakes his head, just once.

‘It’s from _Shawshank Redemption_? No? Oh, man. You should watch it.’

Finally, he lets his mouth curve into a smile. ‘Maybe I will.’

Harry grins back. ‘Good. Do.’

There’s a moment of silence, and Zayn just nods again before digging his fingers into his pocket, scrabbling around for change. From here, all Harry can look at are his eyelashes, lit by the artificial lighting and casting mile long shadows down his face, ghosting into the dip of his Cupid’s bow. 

_He really is so unfairly, incredibly gorgeous_ , Harry finds himself thinking. Which is – well, it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen. It always is. 

Zayn looks surprised when he glances up and finds Harry still standing there, staring at him dopily, hands twisted behind his back. He raises his eyebrows as if to say, _yes_?

‘Um,’ Harry says vacantly, rendered a bit breathless by the awful, dorky twitching of Zayn’s mouth like he’s constantly fighting a smile, like there’s a joke in the air between them that only Zayn’s managed to catch. ‘I haven’t got anything to eat now.’

There’s a pause. ‘Nothing?’

‘Well, I …’ He trails off. He and Niall use what was once the servant’s kitchen, which definitely has some Nesquik and a week-old croissant, and Mrs T’s kitchen is always brimming. Somehow, though, he doesn’t want to give up. ‘It’s just, we wanted eggs.’

‘Oh dear,’ Zayn says dispassionately. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re not though, are you?’

‘No, not really.’ He turns away, shuffling down the aisle, his broad shoulders boxed in by packets of rice and tins of beans, and Harry wants to know what brand of cereal he likes, how he’s going to cook his eggs. Zayn’s head dips as he yawns and Harry spots the tease of a tattoo poking up from the neck of his t-shirt, and he wants to know what that is, too. All at once he’s overwhelmed, not by Zayn but by himself, because he’s always wanted everything, wanted his feet to be knocked from under him, and it’s a feeling so visceral it makes his heart jump like a jammed cassette tape as he follows Zayn down the aisle without thinking.

For as long as Harry can remember, he's made obsessions out of other people. Some kids do it with sports teams, singers, video games. Gemma was completely mental about the Spice Girls. Her daughter Joni is all about horses (there's always one girl obsessed with horses, in Harry’s experience, and he's never been quite sure why). Harry's always been far too everything, it's true, but other living people – that's where the compulsion thrives. 

The boy who sat in front of him in Geography, who perpetually smelled like Lynx and had crooked teeth and used to draw little aliens in the corners of his textbook. The boy in his seminar at uni who had a tattoo of a fox along his forearm and never did the reading and used to turn up with smudged bruises on his neck. That girl opposite him on the train with lilac hair; the boy who serves him a cappuccino in Pret and holds his eye for just a beat too long. He obsesses to the point of obscenity, worrying about their middle name and their star sign and whether they'd be vanilla in bed. And when they glance back at him, out of curiosity or discomfort or maybe even mutual adoration, it's in those moments that he's not as doggedly nice as he always forces himself to be, because he might not have got straight As at school like Gemma and he might never have been that good at football like everyone else, but he knows innately how to fleetingly fall in love, knows it with a sureness that dispels all the interior quarrelling and self conscious that shakes at his bones and demands that he be someone else. 

He knows it better than anything else, like he was born to be the boy that loves everyone. His burning, perilous desire to feel alive – to make himself hurt, to feel everything in spades, in platitudes, in multiplicities of how it should be felt – means he has to fall in love. It’s the biggest, brightest, worst feeling out there. So he hangs back to wait after geography to comment on his classmate’s drawings, and he presses his calf against the boy's leg in his seminar, and he stares unabashedly at the girl on the train, and when he tells the boy in Pret to keep the change, he does it with steel in his eye. He laughs when they laugh and he smiles when they smile, and it's all very nice but it's not the Nice that Harry’s crafted, because there's sticky, scandalous intent there. And maybe they'll want him, for a few months of breathless fucking, or ten minutes of easy heartache, or just a few seconds of uncertainty, basking in the _what if_. Or maybe they won’t. And when it’s over, or when it never begins, his heart will break all over again. And it's temporary.

And he wants it.

‘How was your first weekend here?’ he asks when he catches up with Zayn at the counter, pressing his hipbone against it and smiling his hello at Mrs Crosby behind the counter. He reaches for Zayn’s receipt that he left on the counter and fiddles with it absently. Eggs. 20 pack of Palmall Red. Teabags. Chewing Gum.

Zayn licks his lips. ‘All right.’

‘Yeah?’ Harry swallows and tries a smile. Zayn just thanks Mrs Crosby sweetly and walks away though, straight out of the door, blue plastic bag swinging in his hand. ‘So where’s the name from, then?’ Harry asks, striding after him.

‘Huh?’

‘Zayn. It’s like, Arabic, right?’

Outside, the sky is sleet-grey and sharp, and both of them wince against the startling brightness but don’t stop walking. Zayn shivers a bit in his flimsy porny t-shirt, but Harry’s skin is burning and he doesn’t feel the cold at all.

‘Are you asking where I’m from or where my name’s from?’ Zayn doesn’t look at him, but his mouth twitches again. ‘That’s not the same question.’

‘Well, both I suppose.’

‘You ask a bunch of questions,’ he says, not unkindly.

Harry smiles. ‘I’ve been told.’ 

Over the gravelly lick of the waves against the shore, Harry hears the church bell peeling in the distance, announcing the horrifically early hour. Harry’s suddenly not tired anymore.

‘Well, the name’s Arabic. Means beautiful. And the surname means king.’

‘Oh, sick.’ Harry runs his tongue along his teeth and nods earnestly. ‘I think mine means fortitude or something boring like that.’

Zayn frowns. ‘Fortitude’s not boring.’

‘Hardly king-like, is it?’ Zayn’s frown melts away and he smiles, properly this time, the corners of his mouth lifting. 

‘There were a lot of King Harrys.’

‘Were there?’

‘Harold. Henry. Same difference.’

Harry grins wide enough that his cheeks strain. He’s quite aware that he’s walking away from home, and without the eggs that Liam asked for, but there’s no time to worry about that as he scrambles for something else to say. ‘So you’re Arab, then?’

‘No. I’m Pakistani. Half.’

Harry falters. ‘Uh –’

‘It’s not the same,’ Zayn says, and there’s a firmness to his voice, however gentle, that makes Harry flush.

‘Okay. Got it.’

He says this earnestly enough that Zayn turns his head to look at him, his expression unreadable. 

‘Sorry,’ Zayn says, almost mumbling it. ‘I just, like. People get it wrong a lot. And assuming isn’t bad, I just… there’s a lot of ignorance out there.’

They keep walking, heading towards the incline of the hill now, and Zayn reaches into the plastic bag for the packet of cigarettes, tearing it open with bored, practised ease. He fits one between his lips and doesn’t hesitate before offering one to Harry, the packet open and held towards him.

‘Don’t apologise,’ Harry says, shaking his head at Zayn’s offer and smiling gently. ‘I – I think I’m ignorant in loads of ways. I _know_ I am. But I’m a good learner. I like to learn.’

Zayn blinks at him, a smile toying at his mouth. ‘I’ll remember that,’ he mumbles, still smiling. 

Harry’s speechless. That doesn’t happen often.

Zayn puffs out a thin, delicate line, like steam from a train. ‘You’re not working today then?’

‘Nope. Sundays off.’ Harry smiles. ‘Niall usually ends up checking on the sheep anyway. He loves them too much.’ Zayn’s eyebrows lift. ‘Not in like a bestiality way,’ Harry says quickly. ‘He’s just attached.’

‘You’re not?’

‘I try not to be.’

There’s a pause, and Zayn looks as though he’s storing this information.

‘Are you following me home?’ Zayn asks, without much accusation, exhaling a curl of smoke that billows to the side right into Harry’s face.

‘No,’ Harry says as he continues to follow Zayn home.

‘I thought you and someone were making eggs.’

Louis and Liam’s shrieking voices drift into the preoccupied area of Harry’s cranium. ‘Uh – no. Not really.’

Zayn licks his lips and it makes Harry’s fingers inch, the stretch of neck below his ears burning. ‘They’ll be waiting.’

‘It’s nobody,’ Harry says, firm enough that Zayn nods with tight lips, eyes sparkling. ‘Could do with a walk, anyway.’

Zayn glances at him, and there’s confusion behind the playful brightness of his eyes that suggests he doesn’t know why Harry’s following him around. He’s not into guys. 

_Well._

Harry’s winning smile starts to dip.

It’s like someone turns the brightness down on the sky. He’s suddenly reeling with how early it is, how tired he is, how stupid he’s being. How temporary this all is. 

How dangerous it could be.

He looks at his shoes. They’re the boots he wears every day he’s not at the farm, and they’ve clearly seen better days. _Why is he even bothering?_

‘Maybe I will just go home,’ he says, and his abruptness seems to startle Zayn, brows pulling in as Harry stops dead in the street. Harry allows himself a moment of guilt for dropping the fish like a lead weight as soon as he remembers the improbability of this perfect, sculptured creation of a human ever wanting to fuck him. And yes, Harry is aware that he himself is perfectly fuckable, that he has nice legs and an okay arse and a very, _very_ decent mouth, but it’s piss-o-clock on a Sunday morning and the incoming crackle of his hangover lies low like a grey cloud, and at home, Bess will cuddle him and Niall will dutifully make him anything he asks for if he deploys the Sad Pout for long enough. 

He casts a reluctant look at Zayn and finds him staring back with the burning end of his cigarette tucked between his lips, the sky smudged around him in greys and whites, looking even more confused than before. 

The enthusiasm leaks out of him like blood from a wound.

‘Right,’ Zayn says again, voice slow and unsure around the cigarette, and Harry’s guilt seems sharper. ‘Well. Nice to meet you.’

‘And you, man. See you tomorrow.’

Harry turns without much ceremony, hands stuffed in his pockets as he walks back in the opposite direction. He concentrates on the pull in his thighs, the working of the different muscles as he heads downhill rather than up, because if his thoughts wander they’ll wend their way back to Zayn’s perfect face, his wonky smile.

Zayn calls him, and with some effort, Harry plasters on a polite grin before turning, eyebrows raised receptively.

‘I feel bad now,’ Zayn says, lifting the plastic bag aloft a little awkwardly with one hand. ‘I don’t want to, like, deprive you of eggs.’

‘Honestly –’

‘Want to come for breakfast?’ It’s said so casually that Harry just blinks at him. ‘I have chocolate milk,’ Zayn offers with a shrug.

And if Zayn’s embarrassed by extending this offer to a stranger, nothing in his face indicates it at all. 

But he’s asking. Clearly, he must want a friend. People don’t usually put themselves on the line like this unless they’re desperate, and the ache that pulls at Harry’s stomach is just as potent as the desperate, lustful feeling he just tried to shove away. Maybe he’s lonely, like Harry; the thought of it has the guilt flooding back and washing hard against his pulse. _You’re being a dick,_ Harry’s stern Brain Voice hisses at him. _Maybe he’s lonely, too._

Maybe they’re kindred spirits or something. 

Maybe breaking his heart is worth the risk of finding out. 

Harry’s always been contrary like that. So it isn’t a surprise when he hears himself saying yes, without pausing to wonder, _why?_

_Why?_

 

-

 

It transpires that not only is Zayn unfairly kind and attractive, but he also lives in an actual house, which makes Harry’s attic arrangement wholly embarrassing.

Zayn fumbles with his keys with an inexpert hand, clearly not settled into his new home yet. Once he manages to slip one into the lock, he wedges one foot in the door and doesn’t let it open fully, mumbling in a weird cutesie voice that Harry pretends not to hear. He stands back, hands on his hips, admiring the peeling white shutters and peach coloured walls, the dim reflection of the sea twinkling against the windows. 

Once summoned inside, Harry gapes. The hall is wide, vast, but cluttered with boxes and suitcases. He glances up at the ceiling and finds swirling patterns moulded against the plaster, intricately designed. He squints and spots a cherub. ‘This is sick,’ he says appreciatively.

‘Cheers,’ Zayn says with a nonchalant chuckle. In his peripheral vision, Harry notices Zayn bending, hears him mumble, _be nice, darling_ , and is almost knocked over by the image of Zayn pressing kisses all over a tortoiseshell cat.

‘You have cats?’ Harry asks inanely. He distracts himself by gingerly toeing off his shoes, trying his best not to stunningly overreact to the sight of Zayn cradling a small animal to his chest. Two other cats spring out of nowhere, seemingly from cracks in the floorboards, and begin to circle around Harry’s feet, blinking up at him distrustfully with saucer eyes. 

A lot is happening. Harry’s beginning to feel overwhelmed.

‘Yep, three girls. They’re all terrors, though, they keep me busy.’ Zayn lets the tortoiseshell one out of his arms; she springs to the floor gracefully and joins her sisters to glare at Harry. ‘Aayla and Leia, and this one here is Rey.’ He licks his lips and smiles as Harry bends to stroke the cat in question. She hisses at him and he straightens up like he’s been electrocuted. ‘Ah, sorry. They can be a bit unfriendly, sometimes.’

Harry smiles as best he can with the cat’s laser-fierce gaze fixed to his face. ‘I must smell of dog.’

‘Ah, that’d be it.’

‘Leia as in _Star Wars_?’ 

Zayn grins and nods quickly, and then looks as though he regrets his enthusiasm, mouth twitching like he’s trying to swallow his smile. ‘They’re all from _Star Wars_. Aayla Secura was my favourite.’

‘Oh right,’ Harry says unconvincingly.

‘Blue? From Ryloth?’

‘No clue, mate.’

‘I’m a bit of a nerd. You want tea?’

Zayn leads the way into the kitchen. It seems unnecessarily big; a distant, beamed ceiling and mint coloured walls and endless cream cabinets with granite work surfaces covered with more boxes. Jazz leaks from a record player perched on the kitchen table on the far side of the room, next to a vase of lilies – not smooth restaurant jazz, but upbeat, fun jazz, the type of jazz he imagines people spontaneously play in bars in New York after too many cigarettes and glasses of whisky. Tempting bad luck, a pair of running shoes sit on the kitchen table, and when Harry points them out, Zayn scowls and says, ‘I bought them in a moment of insanity. My girlfriend – ex, I mean – she always used to say I was lazy.’

Harry’s lips tighten at the mention of an ex-girlfriend, but he says nothing. 

Instead, he glances around the kitchen while Zayn hums along to the jazz and spends an extraordinary amount of time making the tea, doing everything at half speed. It’s calm, quiet, which seems to be the atmosphere that perpetually surrounds Zayn, an easy sort of regularity that people try and manufacture and never manage to make look quite cool enough. Zayn’s made his mark here already – there’s a pile of festering, used teabags on the windowsill overlooking the small garden, and there’s a half-finished pack of hobnobs and an open cookbook with pencil scratched notes and a lopsided picture of some foreign city nailed into the wall. Underneath, in black marker pen written right onto the wall, is the word _cacoethes_.

Harry crosses the room and touches things as he goes. A red Nike sweater over the back of a chair. A closed Macbook. A dog-eared copy of _Brave New World_. There’s a painting propped up on a shelf by the window, a strange, pop art version of the London skyline, and Harry presses at the corner of the canvas, wondering whether Zayn bought it because he thought it’d make him seem cool when people come over, like the students who bought blown up Marilyn Monroe canvases from IKEA because they thought it’d give the impression they’re cultured. He doesn’t doubt it – there’s a heavy-handedness, a straight-forwardness to Zayn that Harry likes, that comes with an unspoiled upbringing and an early need for independence. He imagines Zayn’s wide eyes brightening when he found this at a market or in an old junk shop, and it makes Harry smile as he crosses to a box clumsily marked ‘Records’ in scratchy, looping handwriting. He thumbs through Zayn’s collection and finds his nose wrinkling in distaste at the lack of Kate Bush.

‘How’d you like it?’

Harry’s head snaps up. ‘What?’

‘Tea. How’d you like it?’

‘Just milk, thanks.’ He abandons the box of records, unsatisfied, and turns his attention to the one sitting beside it, smaller, just marked _K_. The tape is peeling against the cardboard, like it’s been ripped open and stuck down again, the adhesive losing its effectiveness. He picks at the tape with curious fingernails.

‘Harry,’ Zayn’s voice interrupts. It’s light and hinting at exasperation. ‘Stop touching my stuff.’

Harry steps away awkwardly. ‘Sorry.’

‘Tea’s ready.’

Harry takes it from Zayn’s outstretched hand and smiles his thank you. ‘Your house is amazing.’

Zayn leans back against the counter. ‘My great-aunty owned it,’ he explains, eyes cast down as he blows on his tea with glistening lips. ‘My mum doesn’t have much family, really, and she didn’t know her aunty well at all. Apparently she was a bit of a bitch, though.’ Zayn smiles a little nervously, his nose wrinkling. ‘She didn’t like the fact my mum married a Muslim, blah blah. But she left the house to my mum because there was no one else, and I … I needed somewhere to escape to.’

‘After you broke up with your girlfriend?’

‘Yeah.’

Harry nods knowingly, trying not to press farther as he lets the steam rising from the tea scald his bottom lip. It’s weird, that Zayn lacks the blunt suspicion of a boy who’s grown up in a city and has been taught to treat pleasantries with distrust. When Harry started at university in Manchester, fresh from a childhood getting drunk in open fields and accepting lifts from anyone who looked vaguely familiar, his flatmates blanched at the way he’d talk to people on the street, the honeyed innocence of trust. He’s lost that, now. It’s been drilled out of him. Maybe that’s the biggest sacrifice of growing up; learning how to protect yourself and losing the sweetest, softest part of yourself that always needed protecting the most.

He likes it in Zayn, though. The openness, the way Zayn’s lived here for a week and already little parts of him spill out and stain the house, as though leaving it scarred so the walls will forever hum with the ghost of him. If his family ever sell it, anyone who moves in will smell Zayn in the walls, oak and smoke. They’ll see the mug rings he’s left in the wood and the scratches the cats have already gouged into the skirting board. They’ll find the hum of his energy pressed into the walls, folded under the wallpaper. 

Maybe that’s the difference between them. Zayn’s allowed to leave a mark.

‘I’m impulsive like that,’ Zayn carries on after a moment. ‘I just didn’t want to be in that city anymore, so I woke up and left. I burn bridges. Always have done.’

‘Which city?’

‘London.’

Harry smiles smugly. ‘Knew it.’

‘What?’

Harry squints against a shaft of sunlight that breaks through the clouds and falls directly against his face through Zayn’s window. He can feel the heat of Zayn’s gaze on him as dusty yellow light curls against his cheekbones. ‘I can always tell, with the fish.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. We have a lot passing through, who stay at the B&B for a few months, trying to earn some quick cash. Loads of Londoners.’

‘You make friends with all the fish, then?’ Zayn asks, smirking back, eyebrows raised challengingly.

Harry grins dirtily, blinking against the light. ‘Only if they’re fit.’

He thinks for a moment Zayn might say something back, but then his face is wiped blank again and he turns away, leaving Harry to stare at his back, eyelids flinching in the sun. ‘How’d you like your eggs then?’

‘Uh.’ Harry swallows a mouthful of scalding tea and scratches at his arm, the moment of shimmering hope sinking like a burst of confetti from a canon. The flat tiredness he felt on the hill rears its ugly head. ‘Poached, if you don’t mind.’

Zayn looks at him over his shoulder, unimpressed. ‘Wow. Why am I not surprised.’

‘Don’t be overdramatic. And is that chocolate milk in the tea?’

‘Yeah, sorry. Don’t have any normal milk.’ He looks over his shoulder again, grinning with his tongue poking out from the bottom of his teeth, and the air is knocked from Harry all over again, hard enough that he can’t compose himself fast enough to say something sarcastic, too busy steadying himself against the counter. ‘Fried eggs it is then,’ Zayn says chirpily, reaching into a cupboard and producing a frying pan with a flourish. ‘You can make the toast. Butter’s in the fridge.’

Harry shakes his head, bringing himself back, realigning his thoughts. _He’s straight and heartbroken_ , he reminds himself. _And you’re – you’re nobody._

‘ _Butter? In the fridge_?’ Harry repeats, voice dripping with mock surprise, and he almost squeals like a child when Zayn sticks his tongue out. He’s drenched in the sudden desire to do something impressive, cartwheel or sing Whitney Houston or do some kind of magic trick. 

‘Don’t be a smart arse. I’m cooking for you here.’

‘Sorry, Gordon Ramsay. You invited me, remember.’

Zayn breaks an eggshell over the side of the pan, face nonchalant. ‘You’re the one who kicked up a fuss about the eggs.’

‘You’re the one who _stole_ the eggs from me.’

‘You’re the one who suggested we should be friends.’ Zayn looks over at him again, long eyelashes dark and sooty around his playful eyes. His voice is low, silky. It makes Harry’s skin prickle. ‘Friends make each other eggs. And toast.’

‘If you say so,’ Harry says, a little lamely because he’s grinning like a prized idiot, but he crosses to the fridge all the same and feels the sting of cold against his hot cheeks when he yanks the door open. ‘Are you kidding, Zayn? You don’t have normal milk but you have _cheese strings._ ’

‘Yes. A big part of my diet.’

‘Chocolate milk and cheese strings. Oh! Look, and turkey dinosaurs, too! Amazing.’

Zayn shrugs, closed-lipped smile pulling at his mouth. ‘Can you stop judging all my stuff?’ he says over the sound of oil spitting in the pan. ‘I saw the records upset you.’

‘Sorry,’ Harry says automatically, stepping back from the fridge and nearly toppling over one of the cats. ‘I just kind of thought everyone who owns a record player has _Blue_ on vinyl. Or _Rumors._ ’

Zayn seems unimpressed, lazily prodding at the eggs. ‘I guess boring white music just doesn’t do it for me.’ 

Harry gapes at him, personally offended. ‘Pardon?’

‘Eggs are done,’ Zayn says lightly, turning off the stovetop. He turns and crosses his arms over his chest, one eyebrow pinched in exaggerated disappointment. ‘And look. You haven’t even put the toast on.’ He rolls his eyes and leans forward to snatch the butter from Harry’s limp, unmoving hand. ‘Useless.’

He manoeuvres away from Harry to slot the toast into the toaster, shaking his head, but Harry can see the pull of his cheeks as he smiles, the wrinkle of his nose, and Harry’s heart beats out of time. 

There’s no hope. There never is. Zayn invited him over because he’s lonely, because he wants a friend. Harry’s all dimples and curiosity and slow speech, and people trust him because he looks like the kind of idiot who’ll hold your hand when you fall, and he is, in a lot of ways. He might have long gangly limbs and oversized feet, but his fingers are careful, his hold precise. He doesn’t drop things. You give him your heart and he’ll hold it so carefully, feel the wet pulse of it against his palm, and never let go.

Zayn hums to the sloping jazz again, pink lips pouted, and Harry knows he should give up, shouldn’t entertain the idea. He knows there’s no hope.

There never is.

So how come he still gives into it every time?


	3. (THREE) Barry Lategan, 1966, Twiggy

The first boy Harry ever loved was called Omar.

Typically, Harry goes for athletes, maybe because they leak affected manliness with the brutality of a toxic waste spillage, and he knows it’s unlikely they’ll ever like him back. Omar played for the opposing sixth form college’s football team – striker, number 18 – and Harry used to stare at his calves under the muddied wrinkle of his socks when their teams played against each other against the disappointingly dull Cheshire rain.

He likes them grossly unattainable and completely oblivious. His flatmate with a girlfriend of three years; the person on his course who’s never looked at him twice. It takes them so long to realise what Harry’s doing when he plasters himself to them on nights out, or smiles extra wide when they walk into the room, or stays up with them when they’re too drunk and crying about their own heartache, that by the time they figure it out, Harry’s already completely, joyfully fucked. And it wouldn’t be true to say that they _never_ give in, because a lot of the time they do. Harry’s dodged into enough grotty club toilets, trying to bite back a perverse grin, to prove that. 

The thing is that sweet, likeable, unassuming Harry’s never a threat, until he is. But by the time he emerges from the toilet, still trying not to smile, still indulging his hysterical pulse with fanciful ideas of requited love and hand holding and Sunday morning spooning – it’s over. And his heart breaks for long enough that he can draw some furious, bloodied abstract all over his textbook, shattered lungs and wilting roses where hearts should be, until someone else catches his eye and it starts all over again. 

It’s a challenge. The painful tear of his heart is a test. How many times can you rip yourself in two before you want to stop?

The answer – he doesn’t know. He hasn’t got bored yet. 

It begins, it’s over, and nothing’s real at all.

 

\- 

 

Zayn is heartbreakingly gentle with the sheep.

It’s the sort of discovery that Harry wishes he could forget as soon as it’s known. 

He’s been here long enough now that the novelty of farming has worn off. Sheep are cute, but not when they shit on your shoes or eat your hair or refuse to stand still and be sheared. Their wet noses become associated with illness, with infection. The soft coat of wool mentally becomes just that – a coat in the making, a product. Harry pours his soul into farming because he does so with everything – and why not? What else is there? – but it’s with a benign kind of muscle memory that he runs his hands over each one every morning, patting them to check for wounds or lumps or abscesses. 

Zayn, with his London hands and London frown and London stiff concentration, touches the sheep like they might break. Harry shoves an ewe out of the way and smiles. 

‘What were you reading last week?’ he asks in what he hopes is more of a friendly rather than weird, nosey tone. Gone is the persistent forwardness Harry displayed yesterday; self-consciousness has slithered back to the fore, appearing in the shy and over-eager curve of his smile and the way he’s forcing himself to stop touching his hair, letting it drape over his forehead and tangle with his eyelashes.

Light dapples Zayn’s face as he squints as he peers over at Harry over the top of a sheep’s head, nose scrunching.

‘Uh. It’s, uh. Sheet music.’

Harry licks his lips. ‘What?’

‘Like. It’s not a book. It’s music.’ Zayn grins sheepishly at the look of surprise on Harry’s face. ‘I do read, though. Huxley is my favourite. And I like Adichie. You read her?’

Harry nods stupidly, rendered speechless. 

‘Yeah. _Americanah_ , man.’ Zayn pumps a fist over the skull on his t-shirt and looks up to the sky reverently. There’s a smile in his eyes, like he knows he’s being embarrassing but can’t stop himself. ‘That spoke to me.’

Harry manages to string together something both uninspiring and unduly enthusiastic about Camus and Molière, all the while internally suggesting to himself that he shut up. Zayn smiles languidly and rubs his thumb over the nearest sheep’s ears. 

‘French. How cultured.’

Harry’s not entirely sure if he’s taking the piss or not. He laughs humbly and changes the subject. ‘What do you play?’

‘Cello.’ Zayn swallows. ‘I trained at RCM.’

‘Wow,’ Harry says with appropriate awe, ignoring the way the earth tips slightly on its axis. ‘You must – that means you’re proper good, then.’

He expects Zayn to laugh, but he doesn’t. ‘Yeah I am,’ he says, nodding, although he sounds sad. 

Harry looks down at the grass, contemplates the stirring of regret. They don’t speak again until they’ve collected their lunch from the farmhouse kitchen. Harry wants to ask about the world – the metropolis that Zayn’s lived in, the tube, the internet, the purpose – all alien concepts to him. Once upon a time, he used to have a computer, upon which he’d do Fun Modern things such as watch porn and Skype his granny. He wants to know whether Zayn uses Instagram, whether he hated the London rush hour, whether he ever got sick of line closures and terror warnings and congestion charges and the warning of rising house prices! and inflation! and collapsed coalition! 

He imagines Zayn on some faceless street in London, a cello on his back, a cigarette in his mouth, Huxley and Adiche under his arm. He tries to imagine himself anywhere but here, in this field, and he can’t.

‘Where were you coming back from the other night, then?’ Zayn asks as they settle in the shade below the tree in the yard. His tone is both light and guarded, like he’s trying his best to sound casual but is very aware that he’s still treading on unfamiliar ground. 

‘When?’ Harry says. He takes a big bite of his apple, satisfied by the crunch it makes, and tries not to too obviously let apple juice dribble down his chin. He spots Niall in the distance – delaying his lunch because he’s bandaging up one of the ewe’s legs, snagged on the ever-broken fence. 

‘When I was sitting on the wall, remember? You waved.’ Zayn smiles, watching as Harry rubs the back of his palm over his sticky chin.

‘Uh,’ he says, mouth full of apple. He swallows it best he can, whole lumps clogging up the back of his throat. ‘The pub.’

‘I see. You all go?’

Harry nods. ‘Niall’s there every day, to be honest. He likes the conversation. He could talk to a brick wall and not notice.’

‘Conversation,’ Zayn repeats flatly. 

Harry throws him a reassuring smile. ‘Small town. There’s been quite the scandal, you know.’ He drops his voice, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘Janet Morell’s daughter went to university and has fallen for a _black_ man.’

Zayn bursts out laughing, leaning back and then gasping theatrically, even lifting a hand to his mouth. ‘No! I thought that just happened on TV.’

‘I know. I nearly charged across the room to get confirmation. _A real life black man!’_

‘God. They’d take one step in Bradford and shit themselves.’ He grins crookedly. ‘Bradistan, they call it. Did you know that?’

‘I think so.’

‘It’s like, 20% of the population of the city are Pakistani. So not even that much. But you know how it is.’

Harry doesn’t exactly know how it is; he nods a little hesitantly.

‘People think we live in this, like, utopic post-racist world,’ Zayn says, his smile hardening. ‘If I could just – if they could see where I grew up. The shit I’ve seen.’ He runs his fingers along the stubble on his jaw absently. He has an amazing jaw, Harry’s noticed. Sharp. Severe.

Harry says nothing. 

‘It’s just very… different here,’ Zayn says carefully, deliberately. ‘I don’t know how you do it, I’ve been so…’

‘What?’

Zayn swallows and meets Harry’s eye, smiling sheepishly, as though Harry might be offended. ‘Bored.’

‘That’s because you don’t hang out with us,’ Harry says, a little too enthusiastically. ‘It’s not like all I’ve done for two years is fuck about with sheep.’

Zayn stares at him in horror. ‘Two years? You’ve been here two _years_?’

The ground feels lumpy and uncomfortable under Harry’s bum all of a sudden, and he smiles impishly to hide the red in his cheeks, the sad taste in his mouth. ‘Since I graduated from uni, yeah.’

‘What do you do all day?’

Harry considers this carefully, trying not to be put out. ‘Well I – I farm, don’t I?’

‘And after that?’

‘I help Niall with his baking. Or I – I fix things around the house. Run errands for Mrs T. Clean up after Louis and Liam.’ He swallows, meets Zayn’s eye quickly. ‘I look after Bess. I – I help the twins with their homework, sometimes. I’m good at History, I think, and French. Pam in the village, she’s got multiple sclerosis, so I drive her to the doctors, and I walk her dog when her son’s not around, and Alan from the post office, sometimes he asks me to –’

‘What about _you_ , though?’ Zayn interrupts. ‘What do you do for you?’

Harry’s face contorts into something he assumes is unattractive. ‘I do loads. I keep myself busy.’

Zayn’s jaw shifts. ‘Yeah, I can see.’

He sniffs. ‘It’s home, now. I like it.’

‘Do you?’

‘Don’t you?’

Zayn shrugs. ‘It’s all right. Maddening, though. There’s no…’ He looks away. ‘It’s like it’s not part of the world. I’d never even _heard_ of here.’

‘Catterlock’s not exactly a tourist spot.’

‘It’s like we’re invisible. Nuclear war could break out and the milkman would still come in the morning. I hate that.’

Harry laughs. ‘I _love_ that.’ 

‘Why?’

He looks at Harry like he’s insane. Harry swallows, avoids the question. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here? Everyone here’s hiding from something, Zayn. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.’

‘Two years, though.’ Zayn shakes his head incredulously. ‘You’re mad.’

 _Maybe_ , Harry wants to say. He looks out at the endless field, mud upon mud upon mud, dull trees lining the horizon, a hill that scrapes the cornflower sky. Harry doesn’t have an iPhone, or a computer, or a television. He doesn’t know who’s number one or where people go on holiday nowadays or what the political situation is like, here or abroad. His knowledge of the world is limited to glimpses of headlines in shop windows, the lick of terror and violence and sadness that filters down the valley and vomits itself into black ink on mass-produced paper. He bypasses those and buys _Vogue_. That’s what he does. That’s who he is.

Time doesn’t exist here. _He_ doesn’t exist here. The whole world is huge and spinning on its axis like a disco ball, getting faster and brighter and sharper and newer, and Harry sees none of it. 

Sometimes invisibly suits him. And sometimes it makes him feel sick. 

He watches the river that winds itself down the hill like a scarf. 

_Maybe_ , he wants to say. _But it’s not like I have a choice._

‘Come out with us on Friday,’ is all he says, hauling himself to his feet. He offers Zayn a hand and pulls him up, fingers wrapped around his wrist, and is smacked by the smell of him, cigarettes and laundry and oaky cologne. He doesn’t smell like the country yet. Maybe he won’t stay long enough to. Most don’t.

 

-

 

Harry is standing in his boxers and the world’s largest jumper, fiddling with the mixer whisks as he frowns and bellows out what he thinks is actually quite a good, dramatic rendition of _Half the World Away_. Niall sighs long-sufferingly from the wobbly table of their tiny, lopsided kitchen, the walls heavy with the spectre of ancient servitude.

‘Haz, could you shut up? I can’t concentrate.’

Harry sniffs and tries not to feel too indignant. ‘You didn’t like it?’

‘I think I stopped liking it a few centuries ago.’

A frown puckers Harry’s eyebrows as he shoves the whisks into the mixer with too much force. ‘Remind me why I always end up baking for you, yet you’re the one applying for the baking show?’

‘Stop complaining,’ Niall says cheerfully. He’s folded up at the kitchen table, up to his elbows in application forms with a chewed up biro behind his ear. One of Louis and Liam’s abandoned bowls, green and garish, sits at the centre of the table, the neck stuffed with dandelions that Harry picked from the field. The classroom whiteboard Niall bought from a man he met at the market wobbles in the corner, Harry’s nice bubble writing of ‘HOME OF THE LOST BOYS 2K17’ being slowly encroached by scribbled sentiments of ‘you fucking losers’ and ‘suck a dick – o wait, u alredy did!’ and ‘remember u work for Lilo u tossers’. Louis’ also drawn a realistic, bigger than lifesize penis, complete with veins and hairy balls, just to truly make his mark.

Harry bites his lip. ‘I won’t be there in the tent with you, remember.’

‘For good reason. You said you’d shag Paul Hollywood.’

‘Mmm,’ Harry says, thinking about it again. ‘It’s the eyes.’

Niall laughs loudly, shaking his head in disbelief, and Harry grins at him over his shoulder as he plugs the mixer in. In truth, Harry ends up doing most things for Niall – fixing the broken radiator in his bedroom, baking all of his long-debated creations (once, this included a three-foot croquembouche with edible flowers), painstakingly taping up the cracked bed slats in his ancient iron wrought bed – while Niall sits with his feet up and criticises Harry’s posture or inexpert technique or absent-minded singing. 

‘Make sure you whisk it to fluffy peaks,’ Niall sings when Harry gets going with the mixer, a blob of mixture spitting out of the bowl to land on his cheek.

‘Okay,’ Harry says, scowling at the contraption vibrating in his hand. He licks his lips, tensing even though his back is to Niall. ‘Zayn might be coming tonight.’

‘What?’

Harry clears his throat and speaks louder over the whir of the mixer. ‘Zayn is coming to the pub tonight.’

‘Oh. Nice.’

And that’s that. 

Except it’s not.

‘What do you think of him?’ Harry asks without turning around.

‘Dunno,’ Niall says, and Harry can almost hear him shrug. ‘Good looking.’

Harry snorts. ‘You don’t say?’ he murmurs.

‘I can imagine you wanna dick him down,’ Niall adds eloquently. Harry switches off the mixer and turns to him, chucking a tea towel in his direction in outrage. It flops sadly to the floor between them. Niall blinks at it, unaffected. 

‘’Scuse me,’ he says, scandalised. ‘I’m not just a walking cock, you know.’

Feeling almost immediately guilty, he goes and retrieves the tea towel from the floor. 

‘Yeah, yeah, you have feelings, you’re deep, I know.’ Niall smiles at the blank look on Harry’s face and picks some biscuit crumbs out of his teeth. ‘What? You don’t wanna fuck him?’

Harry blinks. He wants to say it’s obvious that Zayn is still pining for his perfect sounding ex-girlfriend, who is a physiotherapist and an organ donor and a yoga expert with, Harry suspects, perfect teeth and tits and legs. He wants to say that he’s considered, in depth, the fact that if this is Zayn’s type, he doesn’t stand a chance. He wants to say that Zayn’s a walking wet-dream with Disney prince hair and dream-worthy eyelashes and he _reads_ and _listens to jazz_ and has _three cats!_ and _cycles_ and _smiles like the sun_ and _looks at Harry like he’s actually interested in what he’s saying._

He wants to tell Niall that he can’t stop himself from checking compulsively – the front door, the windows, the money under the floorboards. He wants to tell Niall about how the money got there in the first place.

He wants to ask what do I do if I have to be here forever? except he can’t, because he’s Harry Styles.

He turns back to the wet corpse of a meringue. 

‘Here, Haz, do you think I should write that I’m funny or that I’m easygoing as the third best trait about myself?’

‘How about modest?’

‘I’m going to put uproarious. That’s more interesting, isn’t it?’

‘Ace, love it.’

The mixer starts up again as Harry tries to resurrect the meringue. He whisks until his arms hurt, serenading it with some Talking Heads, and when it finally fluffs up – passing the test of holding the bowl upside down over his head, like Niall taught him – he turns with a triumphant grin, wielding the bowl, only to find Niall looking at him with a face like he’s just stubbed his toe. 

‘Nice singing,’ Niall says, smiling a bit faintly. His hair is wilting over his face and he’s tapping the end of his pen against his palm in a frantic, insistent rhythm, one that makes Harry’s pulse quiver. 

‘Thanks – look, it worked!’

‘Nice one, Haz.’

‘What?’ Harry asks nervously after a prolonged silence, because there’s a steely look in Niall’s eye and it doesn’t bode well. He swipes at his cheek, glancing at his fingers when he pulls them away. ‘Do I have something on my face?’

‘You had a bit of meringue, you got it.’

‘Cheers,’ Harry says with a smile, putting the bowl back on the counter. The look on Niall’s face makes him feel itchy and he deliberately doesn’t look at him. ‘What should I do now? Caramel, right? I’m kinda… well I’ll do it, but um, I burned myself pretty bad last time so –’

‘Harry,’ Niall interrupts, voice chipped. ‘I – can I ask you something?’

Harry blinks. ‘Um,’ he says eloquently, glancing around the empty kitchen. ‘Yeah, of course.’

‘And you’ll be really honest with me?’

‘I’m always honest with you, Nialler,’ Harry says without hesitating. Lying through his teeth.

Niall doesn’t immediately reply. 

‘I, um… Well. The form asked about my relationship status,’ Niall says, laughing a bit self-consciously, ‘and sexuality.’ 

Harry just stares at him, his heart flaring with the sudden force of a firework. 

‘And I … I don’t know what to do?’ Niall goes on. ‘Like – what should I do? What do I do?’

Sadness burns inside Harry’s chest, and he crosses the room slowly to sit at the table by Niall’s elbow, blinking at him with doleful, cow-like sincerity. ‘You don’t need to answer that.’

Niall’s cheeks stay pink, but he rolls his eyes in palpable irritation. ‘I do, Harry, it’s on the form.’

‘I know. But like,’ Harry’s voice peels off, swallowing carefully, ‘you don’t have to say single. Is there a box for other?’

Niall’s face twists like it does sometimes, when Harry says the wrong thing, and Harry actually shivers at himself. He sits very still and tries not to fidget too much, struck, oddly, with the memory of coming out to his sister, sweat-slick palms and a heart crackling like tin foil, nervous tears stinging at his eyes. She just threw a sock at him and said ‘I always knew you fancied my boyfriend in year 10!’, but he can’t forget the way true fear lodged in his throat, hefty like someone’d jammed a golf ball up against his Adam’s apple. He feels like that, now – so terrified of saying the wrong thing and breaking Niall’s heart.

And he remembers Niall coming out to him, too. Almost a whole year ago, now, sat outside the old Conservative club with the stars dull and heavy above them, like they were listening. Harry was a bit too drunk for his own good and Niall was far, far too drunk, tears pinching at his eyes, staring at Harry with the same fear he has now as he whispered, ‘ _I’m, like. I think I’m aromantic._ ’ There had been a bit of a dim silence, in which Harry just stared at him, before saying, ‘ _In a, like, Spandeau Ballet kind of way? Cos same. I love Duran Duran._ ’

Harry’s heart aches for him, pulses like a bruise when he thinks of what Niall’s running from. Niall is the most solidly self-assured person Harry knows, but even so, the scars of the past make him hold this secret close to his chest like it might wrap around him like armour and conceal his heart.

‘Do you think I should lie?’ Niall almost whispers, looking with intense focus at a tea ring stamped into the wood of the table. 

‘No,’ Harry says immediately, shaking his head. ‘You shouldn’t ever have to –’

‘It’s national television, Harry!’ Niall says with a strange kind of laugh, half-exasperated, half-scared. ‘Have you ever seen anyone like me on TV? On fucking _Bake Off?_ ’

Harry’s mouth falters. ‘Well, Tamal was gay –’

‘Surely you don’t think it’s the same for me as it is for Tamal? For you?’

‘It could be –’

‘It’s not,’ Niall says bluntly. Harry opens his mouth to say something else, and Niall cuts him off with, ‘I’m a freak, right? You’re an inspiration. A bisexual daydream poster-boy champion. People write songs about people like you, and I – I can’t think of anything that doesn’t _exclude_ people like me. That’s the difference.’ 

There’s a long, awkward silence, as Harry’s stomach churns like a washing machine and Niall bites at his thumbnail and looks at the table. The tap drips obnoxiously and Harry’s jumper starts to feel like it’s drowning him, cutting tightly against his throat. 

Harry gulps against it. ‘You’re not a freak,’ he says quietly. ‘Please don’t say that.’

Every time they speak, Harry’s struck with a visceral, icy sort of terror about saying the wrong thing. There’s nothing worse than bearing your heart, handing it over quivering on a silver platter, and have someone clumsily let it slip through their fingers and clatter to the floor. 

He knows he can’t understand entirely, but he also knows that Niall’s not ashamed about who he is. He wasn’t ashamed when he told Harry the first time, he was only scared – scared about losing his friend, scared about being pushed away. But he’s not ashamed, and Harry can’t watch him convince himself to be.

‘I’m sorry,’ Niall says, reaching over and squeezing Harry’s sugar-coated fingers. He smiles with earnest effort, but it doesn’t quite make it to his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you, mate. It’s just difficult.’

‘I know.’

Niall swallows, watching their intertwined fingers as he presses over Harry’s knuckles. ‘I don’t have anyone to put on the form. Don’t speak to my family. Don’t have a girlfriend –’ He looks up and smiles sheepishly. ‘Sorry, or a boyfriend. Heteronormativity strikes again.’

They share a laugh and for a moment the room tastes sweet, curling over Harry’s tongue. It tastes like Niall – light and rich and syrupy – and he almost forgets everything for a moment, blinded by the brightness of it all. Almost. 

‘You can put me down,’ he suggests, nudging Niall’s knee with his own. ‘As your certifiable best mate.’ He pauses. ‘Even though I won’t be on TV.’

Niall rolls his eyes, still smiling. ‘Mr Shy and Retiring over here.’

The smirk that twists Harry’s mouth is so easy it’s almost natural. ‘I like a private life, what can I say?’

‘That you’d absolutely _love_ to be on TV, for one thing,’ Niall says, kicking Harry’s bare ankle. ‘Imagine all the people who’d _watch_ you, H! Imagine – an even bigger thrill than the time you set fire to that abandoned car!’

Harry’s smile curdles a bit and he lets go of Niall’s hand. ‘Maybe another time,’ he suggests, gripping at the table. ‘So. The caramel?’

He stands up and moves away. 

‘Will you come to the audition with me, at least? If I get it?’

The air is thick with silence and Harry’s skin feels thin as Niall stares at his back and Harry tries to remember how to breathe. It’s been two years of thorny, black lies, and it feels like those little blades press against the column of Harry’s throat, scratching the truth out in spidery letters that need spitting out so badly it makes Harry’s spit taste acrid, like smoke.

He closes his eyes against Niall’s piercing gaze.

He hears the voice, disembodied, maniacal, as though speaking as a voice over. _Come back here and I’ll fucking kill you. Remember that._

He swallows. 

‘You, um. You have to promise I won’t be on TV,’ he mumbles, and he’d never known that one sentence could make him feel ten tonnes lighter and heavier at the same time. He feels the weight lifted from his chest and feels the rest of it pressing between his shoulder blades, against his temples, on top of his pulse. ‘But of course I will. Wouldn’t miss it.’

Niall looks up, pen in hand, grinning widely. ‘You’re the sweetest, Kit Kat,’ he chimes, half-laughing, ‘Lads trip to London!’ and Harry actually grimaces as he turns back to the meringue, his whole frame shuddering.

‘Yay,’ Harry says weakly, smile dropping as soon as Niall can’t see him.

If only he knew.

 

-

 

By the time they’re on their way to the pub, Harry begins to regret his earlier decision to drink a bottle of Pinot in anticipation of the night ahead. He didn’t even eat the dinner Niall made him – smiling gratefully and then tipping all of it down the toilet when he pretended to take it to his room. Far too drunk for his own good, he’s decided it’s necessary he plasters himself to the miraculous mirage that is Zayn – he actually came! – leaning into him as they trudge down the lane towards the Horse & Cart.

Catterlock is a Sylvanian Family kind of town, multi-coloured houses stacked up facing the seafront, Elizabethan streetscapes with cobbled stone and sloping hills and pubs that look as though Shakespeare should be nursing a pint inside. There’s a port with boats that look fake, like movie props, and if it weren’t for Louis and Liam’s awfully forceful reminders of modernity – blaring grime from high-tech speakers, fancy new trainers stacked in the hallway, planned excursions to Croatia for various drug-infested music festivals – Harry would feel like time could have easily stopped here in the 19th century.

But at night, everything’s black. Harry grew up in a village so he’s used to it, ominous dark alleys and twisting corners with a distinct lack of street lamps and light pollution. They could be anywhere now, though. They could be anywhere in the world.

‘I like your shirt,’ is the first thing Zayn says, gesturing with his cigarette to it as though Harry might not be sure what he’s referring to. It’s teasingly translucent, black with red roses, and when Harry looks down at himself stupidly and then meets Zayn’s eye, he finds Zayn’s smiling, smoke seeping out from between his teeth like exhaust puffs.

‘Thanks,’ Harry grins, picking at the hem. ‘I saw it in a magazine, when I was at uni. I had to save my wages for three months to afford it. I put them in a jar and everything, like the movies. And then once I’d got enough, it was um, sold out, so I…’ He trails off when Zayn looks down to ash his cigarette, self-consciousness swooping in and grabbing hold of his stomach with sharp, unyielding talons. 

Zayn glances up at him. ‘Go on,’ he prompts, knocking Harry with his shoulder. ‘I’m listening.’

Harry stares at him. There’s a flake of dead skin coming away from his bottom lip, and sleep in the corner of his eye. Harry feels the overwhelming urge to touch, a desire that races through him like hot water down a drain, burning in his fingertips. It’s a kinaesthetic world and he’s the most touchable thing in it. 

‘Um. I had to buy a size up. My sister stitched it smaller for me.’

Zayn swallows, a tremor running down his throat, fighting that awful smile. ‘That’s so sweet.’

Harry wonders what his mouth tastes like. Smoke, probably, something bitter. Maybe like his laugh, which is slow and a little sardonic, something soft and sharp and sad. Harry wants to paste it all over himself, hot and thick like wallpaper glue.

‘If I could, I’d wear stuff like this all the time,’ Harry spews, wondering vaguely if he’ll ever learn to shut up. ‘Want to do loads. Grow my hair. Get tattoos. Maybe a nipple piercing, one day.’

Zayn’s gaze flickers over to him. ‘Why don’t you?’

It’s an odd question. Harry cocks his head to the side, frowning, and then approximates a West Country accent with, ‘Can’t hardly wear silk all day – I’m a farmer, in’t I?’

Zayn smiles. ‘Are you?’ he asks genuinely, and Harry almost reels.

_Are you?_

The edges of Harry’s heart blacken like burnt toast.

There’s a pause, and if it weren’t for Louis bellowing a story steeped in melodrama, or Niall’s loud guffawing laughter, it would be silent. The two of them, walking together through the sleeping village, by chocolate box cottages and the closed post office and greengrocers, curtains drawn like drapes around a bed. Zayn exhales a curling wisp of smoke slowly, and Harry notices he has a tiny mole above his left eyebrow, a delicate constellation of freckles splattered over his nose. 

‘Niall reminds me of Georgie.’

‘Your ex?’

Zayn nods, rubs over his dry mouth. ‘We grew up together. Went to school together. Started going out when we were thirteen.’

Harry’s heart rattles like the heave of central heating after a long summer, clanging awake. He’s never felt real, proper love, but he’s watched enough movies and read enough books. He knows a love story when he sees one, even though he knows this runs its course right off the edge of a cliff. 

‘It was all very… perfect. You know?’ Harry nods emphatically, even though he doesn’t. ‘She was close with my family; I went on holiday with hers. I was head boy, she was head girl.’ Zayn’s mouth is tense and stiff. ‘We both went to uni in London. I went to RCM, she went to City. We were just…’ He trails off, swallowing hard. ‘Too young, I think. We got engaged too young. We wanted too much, too soon. Or I did, anyway.’

‘She didn’t?’ Harry asks. He feels breathless, staring at Zayn’s face like he’s committing it to memory, barely aware that they’re still moving, trailing far behind the others.

‘Well,’ Zayn says, finally smiling, a tiny pinch at the corners of his lips as he drops the burnt out end of his cigarette. ‘She cheated on me. So, no, I would imagine.’

‘Oh,’ Harry says. He feels the phantom, sympathetic tug of his heart, except he’s never been cheated on and it’s sick and perverse that he wishes the sympathy was real, that he’d had his heart broken too, so he could know how it feels to love and be loved and to have it all torn apart. ‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry.’

Zayn shrugs. ‘Yeah. I wasn’t the best boyfriend, though. I was inattentive, and uninterested sometimes, and like – I think I idolised her? You know, like made her into something she wasn’t, in my head. And then got disappointed when she wasn’t what I thought she would be.’ The smile wilts, dying right there on his mouth, curling in like the corners of a magic carpet. 

‘Like Daisy Buchanan,’ Harry offers, and then for whatever reason immediately feels stupid, not looking to see whether it makes Zayn smile. ‘Uh, or not.’

‘No, exactly. So I don’t blame her. Or I’m trying not to, anyway. It still hurts right now.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ He rubs his lips together. ‘It’s weird without her, sometimes. I feel like – like half alive, sometimes. She’s been part of me for so long. Need to learn how to live again.’

He looks over at Harry and flashes him a smile that feels like it could knock right Harry off his feet and send him tumbling down onto the cobbles, and even though he doesn’t fall Harry has to blink stars out of his eyes. This boy looks like the face of fucking heaven, speaks slow and quiet, observes the world like he’s measuring, tasting, and the fact that somebody’s broken him feels like the biggest, most hateful, obscene crime. Zayn blinks and it throbs under Harry’s skin, a hot pulsating desire to destroy him with his hands, his tongue, so he can put him back together again and leave out the bad parts from before.

‘You have…’ Harry says carefully, deliberately, and gestures at his own mouth. Zayn looks confused, eyebrows drawing in, and Harry smiles, picking at his lower lip. ‘Just a bit of –’

‘Oh!’ Zayn says in understanding, gnawing at his lip like a hamster, and God, how is he so cute. So cute and sexy and sweet and oblivious. A bike riding, jazz listening, chain-smoking, awful creature sent here to remind Harry of every temptation he’s ever had in his life. He has the worst track record of possibly anyone in recorded history of being able to resist the allure of somebody too hot for their own good. 

Dry lips should be disgusting. 

Harry smiles at Zayn’s reddening mouth. 

‘It’s all the country air,’ Zayn mumbles, lip still caught between his teeth. He blinks at Harry, eyes dark. ‘Stop looking at my mouth.’

And Harry is pissed, and Zayn is straight, and Harry’s caught in the midst of a lie that he didn’t want much to do with in the first place, but at the core of everything, under every layer, he is nothing – and always been nothing – but an incorrigible flirt. So he smiles and flickers his gaze up to Zayn’s and down again and says, ‘I have a secret.’

And when Zayn smiles back, shy and surprised, there’s something sordid in it that Harry wants to rub off and see if it flakes off into glitter, into something that shines. 

‘What is it?’ Zayn asks slowly, still smiling, and Harry’s tongue dabs at his lips languidly, thinking _I want you to ruin me._

‘You’ve got to do stuff that makes you feel alive. That’s what I do. That’s what you _have_ to do’

‘Like what?’

And when Harry shrugs, smiles, and says ‘I’ll show you,’ he half expects Zayn to say no. His smile dips, a frown flickering like a dodgy light bulb, teasing a whole room of complexity that he’s kept hidden in shadow.

‘Everyone’s inside. We should go,’ Zayn says, heading in, but just as Harry’s heart sinks – 

‘Okay,’ he adds, looking back over his shoulder. ‘We’ll start tomorrow.’ 

And Harry feels a creeping, crawling thrill as a grin slinks over his mouth. Rare and distinctly magical, cousin to unicorns, naked and writhing like a caught moment of sexual ecstasy, joy in the centre of his chest like the melting, molten centre of a chocolate soufflé – power. 

Harry wipes at the corner of his smile, collecting saliva, and nods. 

For once, the world doesn’t feel static.

 

-

 

Harry wakes to the sound of Liam singing loudly and ostentatiously as usual in the bedroom directly below, adding riffs and high notes and unnecessary ornamentation. He’s freezing cold and completely confused, and he thrashes about on the bed to pull the duvet over his frigid shoulders, lying still again once he’s warmed, his face buried into the pillow.

Something has happened to his brain. Somebody seems to have shoved something else in there, wedging it between all the important bits, so it feels like all of the edges are pushing against his skull. He feels like he might die.

He really needs to stop getting so drunk.

But then he remembers the conversation, the promise, the day he has ahead with Zayn.

_Zayn._

His heart sags heavily even at the thought of him. 

‘Too hot for his own good,’ Harry mumbles into the pillow, eyes screwed shut. 

He has a wank anyway because Zayn’s perfect face is etched behind his eyelids and has been for weeks, even though his head is pounding and he’s probably dying. He indulges in it, thumbing the head of his dick imagining it’s Zayn’s tongue, pinching his thighs in the absence of Zayn’s teeth. His toes curl as he comes all over himself, biting down into the pillow, and it’s only when he wakes up in the damp patch a little while later that he notices the Kit Kat wrapper tucked under his pillow.

He fishes it out and stares at it for so long his eyes start to burn. 

_Did he forget? Or is he going mad?_

He crumples the wrapper in his fist and looks around his bedroom with eyes like saucers, as though seeing it for the first time. He feels as though the room should look different – feel different – if somebody was in here. 

It just feels the same.


	4. (FOUR) Helmut Newton, 1978, Swimming Pools

The sky is huge and infinitely black, hanging low and heavy, and the stars seem orderly even in their obvious disarray – as though carefully stitched, one by one, into the blanket of the air.

Harry shivers as he looks up at it, arms snaking around himself to bunch up the fabric of his hoodie and hold the warmth closer. Despite the cold, though, he feels the approaching thud of excitement, of danger, and he turns to Zayn with wide, bright eyes, grinning into the darkness.

Zayn’s hanging back and looking at him in the same way Harry imagines people school their expressions in the face of lunacy – carefully blank, eyebrows raised in polite question, mouth tight. ‘Here?’ 

‘Yep,’ Harry says, watching as Zayn bites at his lips.

‘We could be arrested.’

Harry rolls his eyes. ‘What for?’

‘Breaking and entering.’

There’s no pause for contemplation – Harry turns to stomp away in a guise of confidence, hoping quite desperately that Zayn follows. ‘Of course it isn’t. I live here.’

‘You live in the farmhouse as an _employee_ ,’ Zayn reminds him, but he’s echoing Harry’s steps all the same, which means Harry’s won. ‘Tom won’t shoot us, will he?’

‘Oh, no. His gun’s been bust since Louis tried to fire cake out of it. Liam’s still got the scar.’

The yard is ghostly in the moonlight, the seemingly ubiquitous noise and clamour of the day melted down into black puddles of shadow, sharp angles that slice against Harry’s face as he leads Zayn around the barn. He turns and puts his finger to his lips, and Zayn casts a worried look at the looming farmhouse, as though one of the curtains might twitch open like an eyelid.

‘The sheep are sleeping,’ Harry says.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ whispers Zayn.

Behind the barn is a car park of sorts – the fancy, olive-coloured Landrover gets its own space in the double garage, but the tractor and the other two off-road vehicles sit sadly neglected and unflavoured, covered in dust and mud. Harry takes a moment to stand back and assess, hands on hips, before he’s satisfied and crosses to the tractor, heaving himself up onto the bonnet.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he hears Zayn say, and it’s only the confidence he has in Zayn’s boredom and frustration, his strange curiosity, that stops Harry from being embarrassed, from leaping from the tractor and suggesting Zayn come in to play Scrabble instead.

He makes it to the roof of the tractor, pulling himself up with actually quite impressive deftness, and after straightening and carefully adjusting his hair, he smiles down at Zayn with what he hopes is encouragement. ‘Come on, scaredy cat.’

‘You’re mad,’ Zayn says, but he’s already reaching for the wheel to follow him. Harry grins into the cold air, feeling it leak between his teeth.

He has to make a small leap to make it to the roof of the barn, and he’s glad Zayn’s preoccupied with climbing – something he’s surprisingly ungraceful at, for all his spindly limbs – so he can’t watch Harry. The heat of Zayn’s gaze would probably send him flying, and as he lands on the barn roof and scrambles to the summit of the slope, parking himself in the middle and wiping away wet leaves and twigs and a patch of moss in the space Zayn will occupy next to him, he realises the young, broad feeling swelling in the centre of his chest isn’t just the thrill of what they’re doing, the sickening drum of fear and excitement and power. It’s Zayn, too. 

It’s sweet, too.

‘This is stupid,’ Zayn says huffily once he’s eventually battled his way to join Harry, his cheeks pinched red. He sits down beside him, somehow tentative and grumpy at once, clinging to the roofing with stiff fingers and a gently irritated expression.

‘It is a bit, yeah.’

‘What would happen if they saw us?’

‘Who? Tom?’

Zayn nods.

‘Well, I’m not sure. I’m usually a good boy.’ Harry sniffs against the burn of the breeze, scrunching his whole face. He rubs impatiently at his nose with his sleeve. ‘Liam and Louis are probably setting something on fire right now, so they’ll be preoccupied with damage control. Or they’ve all been poisoned by the bloody jam.’

Zayn seems to consider this, tracing his lower lip with his tongue and nodding. ‘Not much to worry about if they’re all dead.’

Harry laughs brightly. ‘No, exactly.’

There’s a small silence, natural and expected but also tense in a lot of ways, a sharpness that digs into Harry’s spine. He devotes himself deeply to looking up at the sky, as was his plan all along, chin tilted up, eyes wide, but everything feels colder and he’s struck with the worry that Zayn actually thinks this – and by extension, that Harry himself – is stupid. He swallows thickly, skin prickling, and doesn’t dare to look at him. 

‘You’re a good boy?’

‘Well. Even Niall sometimes smokes a spliff out his window. Not me.’

‘Why not?’

Harry shrugs. Another silence soaks between them.

‘What’s all this about, then, Styles?’

Harry’s gaze doesn’t falter. ‘What?’

‘All the stuff we’ve done.’ Harry can hear the smile in his voice and it makes him smile in return, peeking at Zayn and finding him focussed, watching him.

They started small. Harry took Zayn to the cave he discovered last year, carved unobtrusively into the cliff face, and showed him the rock he and Niall scratched their initials into. They progressed to Harry’s favourite spot at the top of the hill, overlooking the whole town and the harbour and all the surrounding fields, which took them three hours to hike to. They graduated to drunk driving (in a field, because Zayn flat out refused to do that down the lane) and joining Harry’s friend Mark the fishmonger on his 5am daily fishing excursion (Zayn was spectacularly sick over the edge of the boat. That one was ruled out as a disaster). 

All of it has been received by Zayn fairly well – with a sigh, at times, yes, and with a roll of his eyes or a smile at others, but never with query or complaint. He just goes along with it, watching Harry carefully, solemnly, and more often than not mirroring him.

When Harry lay back against the grass at the top of the hill, closing his eyes, Zayn did too. When Harry screamed with laughter as Zayn clumsily donutted the car, Zayn tentatively laughed too. When Harry showed Zayn a rock pool in the cave, crouching down beside it and dipping just the tips of his fingers into the water, he heard Zayn mutter ‘ _this is nice_ ’, just before he pointed out the limpet with what Harry thought sounded an awful lot like whispered delight. 

‘It’s stupid,’ Harry says, holding his gaze. There’s a sulky gust of wind, a suggestion of jeopardy as the barn creaks sleepily beneath them. 

‘It probably is a bit, yeah,’ Zayn says, biting at a smile at his own brazenness. ‘Do go on.’

Harry’s mouth twitches over a smile of his own. ‘I guess…’ He blinks, looks back at the farmhouse. The light in his bedroom is still on. ‘It’s just time, I suppose. I’ve spent so much time missing everything.’

‘Ah,’ says Zayn. ‘A wasted, disaffected youth?’

Harry ignores the sarcasm in his voice. ‘Well I guess. I mean, I went to uni, drank too much. Had a lot of sex with a lot of questionable people. Had my heart broken. The usual. But I –’

‘Was always looking for something more, right?’ Zayn finishes for him, his tone kindly waspish. ‘Well, cheers, John Green.’

‘Kinda,’ Harry says with a breathy laugh, hoping it adequately disguises the lie. He flattens his palms against the roof so hard he feels the gravel pressing shapes into his skin. ‘Is that not the same for you though? You’d been with Georgie forever, right?’

Zayn’s mouth twists. ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah.’ Harry nods curtly. ‘Maybe you don’t know it, but you’ve missed so much. You’ve let monotony bleach you.’ Zayn’s eyebrows lift challengingly, as if to say, _Oh really?_ ‘You feel like you can’t live without her because you forgot who you are, and like… how to live. On your own.’

‘That’s what you’re doing?’

An almost sardonic laugh appears in a stream of air from Harry’s nose. ‘I don’t have a choice.’ He leans back propped up on his hands, crossing one leg over the other. He doesn’t see how Zayn reacts. ‘I just try and appreciate everything, like we did when we were kids. There’d be nothing more exciting than this when I was little. I want to actually _look_ , and like – I don’t know. Remember what excitement feels like. See the beauty in stuff.’

‘Like the rock pool?’

Harry turns to him. His face is dark and shadowed, his nose nothing more than a slice of moonlight on the crater-y eclipse of his cheekbone, and even so, even sitting awkwardly on top of barn in his jeans and soft grey jumper, even shivering a little, he still has a face that demands to be looked at. He still looks like nothing Harry’s ever seen. 

‘Yeah, like the rock pool.’ Harry smiles at him in agreement, lit up by the thrill of conspiracy, and ignores the other suppressed emotions tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘You like _Brave New World_ , right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘The title’s –’

‘From _The Tempest_ , I know.’

‘Yeah, I did it at school. That’s the irony. Miranda, she said, _How many beautiful mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it_. Or something like that.’

Zayn’s mouth twitches. ‘Something like that.’

‘But those people she was talking about were shitty. She just didn’t know, because she’d never seen new people before. It’s about that –’ Harry snaps his fingers ‘– moment of optimism. Finding the world brave and new. Perspective. If you keep your head up and your eyes off the ground, you don’t see the bad stuff. That’s what I’ve learned.’

‘What?’

‘Keep looking up.’ There’s a pause. He swallows. ‘It’s a bit pretentious, isn’t it?’

Zayn licks over his smile in a small flash of pink tongue. ‘A bit.’

Harry shrugs, uncaring. ‘Okay.’

‘I’ve never met a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in real life.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

Zayn laughs, and then in a daring show of bravery, scoots over so he can nudge Harry with his shoulder. ‘What does donutting a car have to do with the beauty of the universe or whatever?’

Harry stares, so aware of the proximity, so close to the swell of Zayn’s tortuous bottom lip, and he wants to say that it’s not about that at all – sometimes he wants to feel the world, big and enormous and heavy and enveloping around him, wants to see the layers of everything, in everything, so he remembers how unimportant he is. Sometimes he wants to feel the beauty of fear, the tightness of the air, the splendour of your body, your biology, as it works through the primal instincts: increased heart rate, higher temperature, drying saliva, wider eyes, faster reflexes. The feel of your blood, hot and beating in your veins, screaming at you _Don’t jump!_ as you take a step closer to the edge. It’s the beauty of being alive.

It’s the beauty of everything he’s allowed to touch.

It’s the beauty in Zayn’s face, too. Confusion and determination and round-eyed joy. But he’s not allowed that.

‘I told you it’s stupid,’ says Harry, smiling through it and shrugging again, but Zayn looks at him for a moment before shaking his head.

‘Nah,’ he says, and then mirrors Harry’s previous position, leaning back on his hands and looking up to the sky. ‘Cacoethes.’

‘What?’

‘It was my word of the week, a while ago. _The desire to do something inadvisable_.’ Zayn smiles. ‘It suits you.’

Inordinately delighted that Zayn is a word of the week person, Harry can only manage, ‘What’s your word now?’

‘Rambunctious.’ Zayn side eyes him. ‘That also suits you. Or could. I don’t think you let yourself be rambunctious very often’

Harry traces the line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth and only manages to tear his gaze away when Zayn says, pointing, ‘That’s Orion’s belt.’

‘Is it?’ Harry asks eagerly, squinting as he looks up, hair curling over his forehead.

‘Nope,’ Zayn says, and he’s grinning, laughing, as he watches Harry go from crestfallen to amused, fiddling with his hair and rolling his eyes. ‘Believe it or not, I’m not a closet astronomer.’

‘I would have believed you,’ Harry says, but he can’t help smiling delightedly as Zayn bites at his lip.

‘My advice, Harry,’ Zayn says, shaking his head as he looks away, turning his face back up to the stars, ‘is don’t.’

Harry stares at him, lost in a concentrated trance of admiration and consideration. Zayn traces the vast, sloping sky, his mouth slightly open, and Harry knows he can see it too – the weight of the world. 

He allows himself another half-second of appreciation, and when he looks at the sky, somehow it looks clearer.

 

\- 

 

On their next day off, Harry starts to consider their meetings as dates. Harry’s imagination often manages to obliterate his admittedly weak grasp on the truth, and with Zayn, it’s not exactly hard. 

On their first date, Harry drives them to a nearby fort, built in the 1600s. They pay £3 each for a guided tour and spend the whole afternoon smirking, shuffling behind old pensioners and alarmingly loud small children as a tour guide, depressingly out of his depth, rattles off dates like he’s on a game show. They eat sandwiches Harry made for them for lunch, cheese and pickle on thick white bread with crisps and a flask of orange juice, spread out on the grass at the top of the cliff. ‘I feel so alive,’ Zayn jokes, bread between his teeth, beads of sweat like condensation on the side of a glass glinting off his forehead, and he reaches out to poke Harry’s dimple when he smiles.

They spend the day driving to nowhere, chatting about London as Harry glances at Zayn when he thinks Zayn’s not looking, noting the sharp line of his jaw and the curve of his smile, tracing the tattoos on his brown arms and the hair curling behind his ears and the way the sun bites at his face with dutiful care, casting chunks of him in shadow with artful delicacy. Zayn only gets it when Harry pulls back up at the fort and it’s dark and very closed – ‘oh no,’ says Zayn, as Harry grins. They climb to the top and Harry manages to prod and elbow Zayn until he agrees to take off his t-shirt, which Harry loops over the flagpole and salutes at seriously. Zayn rolls his eyes.

‘Be annoyed all you like,’ says Harry, ‘I managed to make you take your shirt off on the first date.’

‘It’s not a date, Haz,’ says Zayn, but he smiles all the same, running his hands over his skinny chest, fingernails scratching over the tattoo on his breastbone.

 _Sure_ , says Harry, in his head. 

 

-

 

‘Come in, Styles, chip chop!’

There’s a charade of rearrangement, a small fuss as Harry smiles apologetically and slips into the seat next to one of the twins, folding his napkin over his lap.

‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Well, we’ve started without you, I’m afraid.’

Harry glances over the mound of beef at the centre of the table to Tom, who is holding a speared potato and looking at him carefully. At his side, Louis is shovelling cauliflower cheese into his mouth and flicking peas at Liam simultaneously.

‘That’s all right.’

Sunday dinner – promptly at five, always – is the only meal Niall and Harry venture out of their little servants’ kitchen for, an invitation extended every Sunday under the polite guise that it’s optional, which it is not.

‘Would you like potatoes, Harry?’ the twin at his side – Phoebe, he thinks – asks in a bossy, motherly tone, picking up his plate before he can answer.

‘Oh – thank you.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ Niall asks from across the table, kicking him in the ankle for emphasis. He’s frowning delicately: Sundays are their only day off, and they usually spend it together watching Project Runway on Niall’s laptop or practising one of Niall’s bakes (Harry bakes. Niall instructs). Harry feels disproportionately guilty all of a sudden, his fixed smile drooping.

‘Tell you later,’ he mouths back as Phoebe shoves him his now brimming plate, ignoring the slosh of the gravy as it drips down to his lap.

As usual, the talk turns to the sheep, and after asking the girls about school and teasing Fizzy about her boyfriend, Harry lets conversation pass over him as he chews on his beef and realises the sudden obliviousness he feels regarding everything that doesn’t involve Zayn. 

They met by accident this afternoon, bumping into each other in town as Harry popped in to buy a new lightbulb for his bedside lamp.

Date Two, spontaneity withstanding.

Harry remembers the way Zayn licked ketchup off his thumb when they shared a portion of chips, the way the salt clung to his mouth with a poetic and devastating effect. His brain conjured up all kinds of metaphors – raindrops on the edge of a rose was a personal favourite – and he grins into his gravy imagining the exasperated roll of Zayn’s eyes had he said it aloud.

‘How’s the new boy doing, then?’ Tom asks broadly, as though Daisy or Phoebe might also be able to answer. Harry’s gaze snaps up.

‘Fine,’ says Niall.

‘Shit,’ says Louis in an unnecessarily vicious voice, waving his fork around. ‘He dresses like a right twat.’

‘He does,’ pipes up Liam in earnest.

Tom sniffs, and then with the amiable, unintentional kind of racism that only a certain clueless person manages to possess, ‘Indian, is he?’

‘Pakistani,’ Harry says.

‘Ah. How lovely,’ says Mrs T vaguely. ‘I’ve heard they have nice summers.’

‘I don’t like him,’ Louis says with unapologetic glee. ‘Something weird about him. Fishy. Init, Li?’

‘Yeah, defo.’

Harry has doubts that Louis is able to adequately measure character up close, let alone from across the entire field. He glances at the best friend Louis’ made in Liam – he’s staring at his own reflection in the emptied potato tray and grinning like a buffoon.

‘Good worker?’ asks Tom with theatrical nonchalance, doing little to disguise the reason these dinners are compulsory. 

‘Yes,’ says Harry quickly, before anyone else can chime in. ‘He’s better at fixing the fence than even me or Niall, I’d say. Got a better knack for it.’

‘What else has he got a knack for, Styles?’ Louis asks, waggling his eyebrows as Liam snorts into his cabbage. ‘Good hands, has he?’

Harry looks down at his plate to hide the childish, embarrassed frown that pulls at his eyebrows, blushing like a schoolboy.

‘Leave it out, Lou,’ Niall says pleasantly, as though discussing the football scores. ‘Here, Daise, could you pass me the Yorkshires –’

Fizzy shoots Harry the excited look that only sixteen year olds master so well in the face of gossip. ‘What’s this?’ 

‘Nothing,’ Harry mumbles, but Louis speaks over him.

‘Let’s just say Styles has been preoccupied lately,’ Louis says, overwhelmingly self-important, looking at Harry frankly. ‘Always out playing with his new friend.’

‘Is that right?’ says Tom, tone indiscernible. 

Harry swallows carefully. ‘Well –’

‘I think it’s sweet,’ says Liam, almost indulgent, smiling like a proud granny as he helps himself to seconds. ‘No more lonely Harry.’

‘Lonely, Greek tragedy Harry,’ snickers Louis. 

‘Our very own Gabriel Oak,’ says Mrs T, lightly teasing in a way that doesn’t manage to prick quite as sharply as it does from everyone else.

Louis looks at her exasperatedly. ‘Don’t be daft, Mum,’ he says, and then, in a generous stab at something outside of his intellect, ‘This has got nothing to do with _The Walking Dead._ ’

‘I think it’s nice, Harry,’ Mrs T says warmly, completely ignoring Louis with a regal sniff. ‘Don’t let the boys tease you, just because they’re too busy messing around with each other to find themselves girlfriends.’

Harry forces a weak smile at her, hacking at his beef with a passionate sort of relish as Louis begins a monologue about his jam enterprise that nobody listens to.

He realises with no surprise whatsoever that Zayn has assumed the rose gold, gilded, sparkling status of Romance in his mind – not entirely a difficult pair of shoes to fill considering Harry has been known to fall helplessly in love with rarely seen, rarely conversed with novelties, such as the milkman. Still, he’s filled with a deep sense of both regret and excitement, an _oh no not this again_ along with a _thank fuck, yes please_ , all at once. 

He thinks of a universe where Zayn likes Harry, and Harry likes him, and they do all the necessary things like have mind-blowing sex and count Zayn’s eyelashes and spend at least five hours talking about how attractive one finds the other – Harry feels a shiver of a simple, uncomplicated kind of happiness he hasn’t felt in a long time.

 

\- 

 

Monday morning, Zayn smiles beautifully at Harry as he chains his bike to the fence, raising a hand in hello.

He strides over, red Nike jumper falling past his wrists, bending to pat Bess. 

‘Hiya, Harry,’ he says sweetly, breath clouding in front of him in puffs of tangible heat, a heat that creeps through the fabric of Harry’s clothes, sinks like an ache through his skin, curls perfectly between his ribs as though tying them together. ‘I have a new word – fugacious.’

‘What’s it mean?’

‘Transient and fleeting.’

Harry shivers again.

 

-

 

Harry is pink-cheeked and dangerously drunk, past the point of both coherence and self-control. He keeps missing his mouth as he slurps at what could possibly be his fourth pint, distracted by the dopey way Zayn laughs with scrunched up eyes, or the nervous way he’s fiddling with the beer mat with slender, still-soft fingers. Not hardened and weathered like Harry’s hands. 

He wants them on him. _In_ him. 

As a rule, Zayn doesn’t ever join them on the weekends. He smiles at their invitations every week, with mud and wool crusting their fingers and the wind strong against their pink cheeks, whipping their hair in a Wuthering Heights-ish way, and Harry thinks there’s an almost hopeful pull to his eyebrows, a hope that echoes in Harry’s chest for the entire week. But once Saturday night rolls around, he finds himself resentfully squashed between Louis and Liam while the pair of them squawk about what sounds like gravely vanilla hetero sex that, if Harry cared enough to invest himself in, would sneer at, and it’s all he can do not to sprint to Zayn’s house and bash his door down. 

More than anything, he likes listening to Zayn speak. Every story makes Zayn more real, tangible, a real thing that Harry can touch. 

‘Why cello?’ Harry asked once (Date Nine), slumped on Zayn’s sofa and nibbling on a Kit Kat. As though he’d known Harry was coming, he’d had one ready and waiting on the kitchen table. 

Zayn shrugged, smile toying at his mouth. ‘Everyone at school was learning guitar and getting into these awful indie bands. I just wanted to be different.’

‘I was in an awful indie band at uni,’ Harry provided with a chocolatey grin.

Zayn tried and failed to look exasperated. ‘Of course you were.’

‘We were quite good.’

‘Really,’ Zayn says without emotion. ‘Give us one of your songs, then.’

‘Had one called _Deadbeat Daydream_.’

‘How’d it go?’

Harry leaned into him, eyes shining with mischief. ‘ _So she broke my heart, nice and slowly, Now she’s gone, I fall apart, wholly, lonely, my one and only, one and only._ ’ He nudged Zayn on the shoulder. ‘You’d relate to that, right, Mr Ex-Fiancé?’

In hindsight, Harry remembers Zayn looking a little dazed, perhaps by their proximity, Harry’s crooning mouth just inches from his. But the desperate mind does amazing things in the name of wish fulfilment, and Zayn’s definitely had a similarly glazed look when wading through sheep shit.

Still, he told Zayn to come to the pub, and for once he’s here. 

That means something, doesn’t it?

Harry is very drunk. Zayn is sitting next to Harry, very close. Their thighs are touching.

‘When I first graduated, I played for a theatre orchestra,’ Zayn is telling Liam, and also unintentionally telling Harry, who’s listening intently, eyes on Zayn’s close-shaven jaw, watching the muscle as it works. ‘The guy that played first violin was a complete twat. Thought he was concertmaster for the Philharmonic or something, used to boss everyone about.’

‘Oh, I know the type,’ says Louis – the bossiest man in the world – from the other end of the table, sipping his pint knowingly. 

‘Yeah. So one afternoon, me and Davey who played timpani, we waited till all the lights were down, all the audience in their seats, you know, and we tucked ice cubes down his back.’

Harry smiles against the rim of his pint, hearing Liam gasp and watching as Zayn grins dopily, lip between his teeth.

‘You didn’t!’

‘He said we half ruined his designer suit, poor sod. Only ice though, init? The dramatics.’

Harry huffs a laugh and Zayn turns, smiles with an air of surprise at Harry, as though surprised and also delighted that he was listening. Harry just blinks at him, thrown off by the curve of Zayn’s lower lip, and slops some beer down his front.

‘Come out for a cigarette with me?’ Zayn asks, squeezing Harry’s thigh gently before standing up. It’s more of an instruction than anything else, and Harry trots after him obediently, wet pint glass clutched in his hand, t-shirt flapping around his waist. The other boys snort, and Harry just turns to smile at them benignly, shrugging as if to say, _what can I do?._

They lean against the wall in the corner, skin on brick, and Zayn dips his head to light his cigarette, hand curling to protect the flame from the breeze. It lights up his face momentarily, bathes him amber and sets his eyelashes red, and it makes Harry’s head spin.

It’s drizzling, the sky half-heartedly spitting out grey rain that intermittently dares to brush against Zayn’s face. Harry watches Zayn blink some out of his eye, nose scrunching.

‘Hi,’ Harry says quietly when Zayn notices him staring and smiles curiously, eyes searching as Harry rubs a hand over his rain-speckled mouth. 

‘Hi.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘It is.’

‘Do you wanna hear a story?’

Zayn smiles. ‘Always.’

‘My granny said that it rains because the stars bump together,’ Harry says, gesturing a bit vaguely at the sky. ‘I used to be scared of the rain, when I was younger. Storms and that. But she told me it’s just stardust, and the atmosphere makes it wet when it falls down.’

‘I believe that,’ Zayn says, nodding earnestly, still looking up. Harry stares at the line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth and it hits him like a punch, how much he wants him. He swallows and closes his eyes and feels dizzy with it. ‘You know we’re all made from stars, though?’

‘What?’

‘Yeah.’ Harry blinks his eyes open and Zayn’s smiling gently at him. ‘There’s iron in our blood, and that comes from stars, when they die. So our blood is all stardust.’ He picks up Harry’s hand and runs his fingertip along the vein on the back of his palm, between the ridges of his bones. Harry feels like the breath has been punched out of him. ‘They died and now we’re alive.’

Zayn drops Harry’s hand, taking a drag of his cigarette, and the space between them suddenly seems so impersonal, so huge and jarring.

‘Ooh,’ Harry says shakily. ‘Science.’

‘Love science.’

‘Amazing.’

Harry’s still not breathing, his back against the wall as he stares at Zayn, blood thick under his skin. He can believe it, that Zayn comes from a star, because he’s almost glowing in front of Harry under the light of his cigarette, and he thinks that if Zayn ever let Harry touch him properly, hold his naked skin and press their bodies together, he’d burn right up like he’d thrown himself into a supernova. His pulse thunders even harder, even faster, when Zayn tilts his head back to exhale, glancing through the window, like his blood’s under the effect of some kind of switch, roaring around Harry’s body with the heat and force of a rocket. 

Harry turns and looks over his shoulder to follow his gaze and feels a little tortured cry from his heart, bleating like the wounded springs of an old mattress.

‘She’s pretty,’ Harry says, smiling in a way he hopes is appropriate and not horrifically, grotesquely shark-like. Zayn looks back at him, cheeks colouring.

‘Is she?’ Zayn says weakly, like he hadn’t noticed.

Harry’s painful smile grows even broader. ‘Oh yeah, and she’s dead nice too. She’s been working here since I first arrived, was one of the first people I spoke to.’

Zayn seems to consider this, pausing before looking back at her through the window. She really is pretty – ash blonde hair, plump rouged lips – and when she smiles kindly at one of the regulars, Harry notices the quirk of Zayn’s lips too.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Nicola,’ Harry says gloomily.

Zayn nods slowly, exhaling so his face is half-obscured under a thin stream of smoke. Harry desperately tries to keep a comprehensive view of his face, but for a moment, it’s like peeking through net curtains, and the feeling of having lost him makes his spit dry up.

‘You should ask her out,’ he’s quite alarmed to hear himself say. 

Zayn looks at him. ‘What?’

Even the most inconsequential movements now feel like they weigh heavier than Harry’s capable of; by the time he’s managed to rearrange his face into something conniving and playful, he’s sure Zayn must have seen the frank look of horror that proceeded it. ‘All this shit that you and me are doing, all the stupid stuff, that’s all to get over Georgie, right? So – so maybe you just need to find someone else.’

There’s a moment where they stare at each other before Zayn looks at his shoes. The smoke trails up from his cigarette and the air feels like it’s wet between them, sodden and dripping, and Harry shivers in his t-shirt, his teeth chattering, and all of a sudden, just wants to be at home. 

Not here, home. Not Manchester or Paris or anywhere else. He wants Cheshire, his grandparents, Gemma. 

Without saying anything else, Zayn finishes his cigarette and they go inside.

Harry sees the necessity for a lot more alcohol, as fast as he can. He tries to remember what it feels like to be kissed – really kissed, solidly, unforgivingly, with every bump of teeth and squelch of spit and hot fan of breath – and he can’t. 

Potentially a long time and many drinks later, somehow Harry finds that he is at the jukebox (the first time Zayn came here, he gasped, ‘ _a real jukebox? No fucking way! This place is insane_ ’). The entire weight of his body is supported by it, hips pressed against the groaning plastic, as he tries to stuff coins into the slot with clumsy fingers; his fingers don’t work, the jukebox does its best not to help.

‘Hazzaaaaa,’ Niall wails with a laugh, shoulders shaking as he wraps his arms around Harry from behind and squeezes. ‘Mate, it’s been ten minutes! Where’s the song?’

‘Coming!’ Harry insists, gesturing messily at the jukebox with a pout. ‘Slow.’

‘Oh God, you’re so gone.’

‘Put on Shakira,’ Harry instructs, pressing his face into Niall’s neck, but he must not pronounce anything right because Niall’s body tremors with laughter.

‘What?’

‘Sha-kir-a,’ he says slowly, and Niall squirms away from him, mewling in disgust.

‘All right, stop slobbering all over my neck you twat,’ he laughs, taking Harry’s money from his limp palm. Everything is dark and blurry, shapes twisting behind Harry’s closed eyelids, the world spinning as he presses his forehead against Niall’s collarbone and waits patiently. And then the song starts, and Niall’s laughing, laughing, laughing into Harry’s ear and his hands are on Harry’s hips, trying to sway him to the beat, and Harry’s mumbling the lyrics but his mouth isn’t moving fast enough, his tongue like a thick slug in his mouth, but he’s smiling and throwing his head back, hair all stuck to his forehead, and Niall’s still laughing, and everything feels fine.

He opens his eyes and looks for Louis, because Louis is fun and likes dancing and definitely will be as drunk and fun and dancey as Harry, and when his eyes focus enough to determine chairs from human beings he sees Louis bounding in from the garden, face bright, eyes wide. And Zayn’s behind him. 

He can’t help the dull, greenish feeling in his gut at the thought of them outside together, even if they were only reluctantly united by smokers’ alliance.

Harry should take up smoking again. Immediately.

He swallows and pushes some hair out of his eyes, the piercing sound of Louis shouting ‘oi oi!’ clattering around his brain like he’s bashing pots and pans together. Zayn is loitering on the edge of the makeshift dance floor, hovering awkwardly by the bar. Harry stumbles forward towards him, thinking about the cigarette, how it looks in Zayn’s perfect mouth, but Niall laughs and catches him around the waist, pulling him back. He thinks he sees Zayn’s eyes drift to Niall’s arms around Harry’s waist, but dispels the idea with a rough shake of his head.

But the longer it goes on, the more he feels it. The heat of Zayn’s gaze on him, snapping to his hips, his legs, the open curve of his mouth. 

Time folds again – a lot of things happen, or maybe nothing at all, a few more songs, perhaps another drink – and Harry’s outside, sat on the floor with his forehead against his knees. It’s so cold, blisteringly so, but somehow he knows it is without actually feeling it. That’s nice. His tongue is warm against the back of his teeth, and his hair is soft against the nape of his neck, and as he sways delicately and unintentionally on the spot, he feels almightily invincible.

For someone who is essentially a non-person, who solely occupies the two spaces of Harry the farmer and Harry the friend and nothing more, invincibility feels amazing. He lifts his arm to his face and bites at the skin hard, tasting the soapy cleanness of himself, brushing his tongue against the light hair on his arm and finding it soft. He pulls back and giggles – he’d almost expected to find he’d bitten a chunk out of himself, but all he sees is the ghostly, blurred ring of his teeth marks, like a mug stain on wood, fading away.

‘Harry?’ a gentle voice says, and it’s weird but it’s almost like he tastes the sound of it, sugary like penny sweets, warm and hesitant and slow. His vision has decided to call it a day and he’s pretty sure his spit won’t let his mouth work, so he resigns himself to grunting into his knee. ‘You okay, babe?’

He’s not really in the mood for answering. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter and hopes the person goes away. 

There are cold, soft fingers on his forehead. The smell of smoke. Oak. It’s nice. ‘God, you worry me. You’re a mess.’ 

Harry doesn’t grace him with a reply.

‘Shall I get Niall? Haz? You hearing me?’

‘Hnghh,’ is all Harry says helpfully.

He takes a gulping, jagged breath when the person walks away. It’s thick and tastes like the country; grass and salt and rain. The ghost of something reveals itself to Harry – Manchester. Petrol and tarmac and money and plastic. The burn of bright lamp light. And then London. The smell of that house, lavender and Tom Ford and smoke.

Niall’s voice drifts over, loud and concerned, and then Louis’, horribly abrasive as though scraping against the air like nails on a chalkboard, and then Liam’s, clucky and disguisedly agitated. Louis and Niall begin a charade of telling Harry off, and in the background, Harry hears Zayn whispering to Liam, deliberately quiet so Harry can’t hear. He frowns into his arm, groaning indignantly, but if anyone hears him they don’t let on.

He’s hauled up like a ragdoll, flopping without dignity into what he imagines is Liam’s side, and it takes a number of people to tug Harry’s coat over his arms, as though dressing a sleeping child.

‘You gonna be okay, Zayn?’ Harry hears Liam ask as he fusses with Harry’s coat, doing the buttons up right to his chin.

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m just up the hill a little,’ Zayn says, and Harry can hear the tentative smile in his voice. God, that’s horrible. That’s truly awful. ‘Take care of him, yeah?’

‘We always do,’ Louis says self-importantly. 

The walk back is long, frigid, too many cobbles tripping him up, too many stars in the sky. Harry collapses against Liam and lets himself be dragged like a corpse, soaking in Liam’s body heat, the feel of his breath against Harry’s hair.

‘You okay, sunshine?’ Liam asks, squeezing Harry’s waist, and Harry just thinks of Zayn’s cold fingers on his burning face, soft and light and gentle, like Harry’s something to be broken.

‘Fuck,’ Harry moans, head swimming. His voice is garbled, slurry, like it is after he comes. _Zayn. Coming. Oh fuck._ He tilts his head back. ‘God, I fancy him. So much. Why. Shit. Why.’

Liam laughs. ‘Oh, of course you do.’ 

‘For fuck’s sake, Styles, you’re you and he’s a hot fish, it’s bound to happen,’ says Louis with impatience. He pinches the fleshy part of Harry’s waist harder than necessary. ‘Just need to get in there now before he leaves.’

‘You’re in with a chance with this one,’ says Liam conspiratorially. ‘Never stops staring at you, you know. Asks questions about you.’

Harry frowns, confused, but now’s not the time to press the matter as his stomach lurches dangerously and appears as a hiccough, ripping its way out of Harry’s chest and breaking in the still air between them. Wisely, Liam picks up the pace before Harry vomits over someone’s prized shrubbery.

‘What about you, then, Nialler?’ Louis asks.

Harry hears Niall swallow. ‘What about me?’

‘You know! Project _Pop Niall’s Cherry 2k16._ ’

There’s a pause. Amidst a sea of beer and regret, Harry’s stomach tightens. 

‘I only will when Liam does,’ Niall manages, his voice thick like wax. 

‘You know I’m holding out for Soph,’ Liam says stuffily.

‘Mental,’ Louis says, shaking his head. ‘Absolutely mental.’

‘It’s romantic!’

‘It’s stupid! She’s in _Spain_ , you idiot.’

‘So?’

‘That might as well be Mars!’

‘Well –’

‘Why give yourself blue balls for no reason?’

Harry tries to wrench his mouth open to intervene, but all that happens is another hiccough and a startling wave of nausea. Niall says nothing. 

‘In the name of love.’

‘She’ll never know! I’m sure she’s banged loads of fit Spanish lads by now.’

‘Oh, cheers, Lou, that makes me feel great.’

‘What, you think she’s not had sex since final year of uni? People have _needs_ , Liam.’

‘Yeah, well I’m waiting.’

‘Insane.’

‘I’ve made my choice, Lou. Abstinence.’ 

‘Sex is _natural_. Everyone needs it. You’re torturing yourself, mate.’

Harry’s blood runs blue, like someone’s twisting a cold tap over his arteries and flushing him out. Niall doesn’t speak once the whole way home. 

 

-

 

In bed, with his boxers tight around his hips and his head pounding, Harry blindly slaps around a hand on the dresser for his phone, a Nokia 3310 that Louis claims has survived both the Blitz and the Industrial Revolution, in that order, and scrolls through his phonebook. How sad – all the names, all the people he loves, and all the things he’s not allowed to do. He shivers wildly in a spasm of loneliness, the sheets wrapped around him tightly like he’s being mummified. 

In a drunken moment of insanity he presses call, listens to it dial. He’s so cold he can feel it in his heart. Zayn’s fingers were cold, but they were nice, then. They’d be nice now.

The line rings through to an answering machine, and the loneliness gets worse, more visceral, like it’s physically stood in shadowy corner of his bedroom. He hangs up and rings again, remembering with a horrible stab of fear that he hasn’t looked under his floorboards, or checked the front door is locked, and he’s suddenly saucer-eyed and panting, his heart crackling like popping-candy. 

‘Hello?’ says a bleary, half-awake voice at the end of the phone. ‘Who is it?’

Harry’s breath catches so quickly it must be audible, even hundreds of miles away where she is. 

The emotions he often gets nowadays – fear and excitement and lust and fear again – they sting like nettles and throb and gust and mutate so quickly, like a high-speed video, but nothing oozes like sadness. Nothing creeps or bruises or scars like it. Nothing else threatens to never go away.

‘Who is this? It’s almost three in the morning,’ Gemma hisses, sounding so familiarly pissed off that Harry feels the wet crawl of tears against his temples. He clings to the phone like a life buoy, squeezing his eyes shut against the tide.

Gemma’s silent at the end of the line. Harry takes a deep, broken breath, and the effort feels too enormous to be true.

She inhales sharply, almost chokes on it. ‘Is – is that you? Ki –’

Harry hangs up.

 

-

 

When Harry wakes and feels a new Kit Kat wrapper sticking to his clammy cheek, he can’t even be scared – he tears it from his face and rips it into metal coloured snowflakes, teeth gritted, heart roaring. 

_Fuck you if you think you can fuck with me,_ he thinks, blood burning against his cheeks. _Fuck you fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou._

He upturns his whole room, searching for traces of somebody else. He tears up the floorboard, ripping a nail as he does, ignoring the blood dripping to his thigh as he checks for the red rucksack. 

It’s there. Of course it bloody is. It sits under his floorboards like a bloodstain and against his heart like a fucking bruise.

He stands, whirls around, Kit Kat snowflakes in his hair and at his feet. He looks out of the window – all he can see is the fucking sky, the hill, the stupid empty yard below as Bess takes a morning piss, unaware she’s being watched.

He storms to his and Niall’s shared bathroom, half-naked body too angry to shiver as he hears the central heating heave in its dire effort to warm the whole house. He slams the door shut behind him, hands shaking, and sticks his bleeding nail under the tap, watching as it dyes the water red, watching as it swirls around the sink, chasing itself away from the plug, until it’s sucked in, vanished, down into the black.

 

-

 

Drizzle tastes like musk and is flattening the sorry affair that is his hair this morning, but it’s early on a Sunday and he’s lonely and tired and spent half the night cradling his stupid shit phone, staring at his granny and Gemma and Jonny’s phone numbers, and this morning being sick – violently so, until his stomach hurt – and jumping every time he heard Niall so much as fart in the other room, and somehow, he wants Zayn.

So he lopes up the hill, Sunday rain in his eyes, hangover heavy between his ears, coat clinging to his shoulders. He smiles at the family that walk by, bucket and spade clutched in the little girl’s hand and collecting rain water as they head in the direction of the car, stoically off to the beach. She cowers into her mum’s side at the sight of Bess staggering at Harry’s feet, blinking in fright and awe, and Harry’s chest actually hurts. He walks faster after that.

‘Hey!’ Zayn says with unguarded enthusiasm when he peeks with one eye from behind his door, audibly foot-wrestling with his cats. ‘You’re alive!’

‘Ha,’ says Harry flatly. ‘Barely.’

‘You okay, Haz?’

Harry sniffs and lifts the carton of eggs in his hand. ‘Want an omelette? Date twelve?’

‘It’s not a date.’ Zayn smiles. ‘Are you asking me to cook for you, again?’

He doesn’t deny it. It only makes Zayn smile wider. 

‘Is it okay that I brought Bess?’ he asks. ‘She’s been so clingy with me this morning, I didn’t want to leave her.’

‘Yeah, no worries,’ says Zayn, and then, as though being telepathically reminded of his allegiance to his cats, ‘Well, we can just keep her out in the garden.’

Harry puts on the Miles Davis record he finds already in the player and wallows at the table as Zayn makes them their omelettes. Outside, Bess is making the most of her new surroundings by barking at everything and chewing the wet grass thoughtfully. The three cats sit lined up at the window, watching her with disdain. 

On the wall, in black marker pen: Cacoethes. Rambunctious. Ensorcell. Logomachy. Omphalos. Fugacious. 

‘How’re you feeling this morning?’ Zayn asks cheerfully.

‘Close to death,’ Harry says, smiling minutely when Zayn laughs. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassing.’

‘You get too drunk.’

Harry hums shortly. 

‘I was – um.’ He hears Zayn cough. ‘People will worry about you, you know. If you keep getting drunk like that.’

There’s absolutely nothing Harry can say in response that isn’t incriminating or humiliating, so he decides not to reply.

‘Don’t eat ham so it’s just cheese and mushroom in the omelettes, I’m afraid.’

Bess is now sitting at the kitchen door, bored of the garden, looking sadly in at him, her damp ears wilting. Harry looks away from her guiltily and tries a smile. ‘Sounds amazing.’

Zayn grins in his devastating way, shaking his head. ‘You do flatter me.’

‘I aim to please.’

Zayn laughs again, shaking his hips a bit to the beat. 

Harry ignores the potent explosion in the depths of his chest. 

‘You’re listening Miles Davis again,’ Harry says in the absence of anything more interesting, picking at a splinter of wood with his thumbnail.

‘Yeah.’ He can hear the smile in Zayn’s voice. ‘Love jazz, me. It’s my favourite to play.’

‘Are you gonna try for a jazz orchestra, then? When you go back to London?’

Zayn glances at him, and Harry notes the wariness in his half smile. ‘I guess. I haven’t thought about it.’

‘Why not?’

Zayn shrugs. ‘Dunno.’

‘Well, you should.’

Zayn blinks dazedly and turns back to the sizzling pan, and Harry rubs his face tiredly and nearly laughs, because Zayn’s practically compiled of all of Harry’s dreams, different fantasies stitched together with gold, shining lace, and Harry’s sat there in a Pet Shop Boys t-shirt with flat hair and a spot on his jaw and he’s angry with Zayn because he has a life outside of this awful town and Harry doesn’t.

It’s just that around Zayn, Harry remembers who he is. The stuffy blanket of mediocrity and anonymity he lives under becomes heavy, suffocating, and Zayn’s slick and sharp and sweet and soft and everything Harry’s always wanted and wanted to be and never been able to achieve. He looks at Zayn, and then down at himself, and is left groping in the darkness for something else, like there’s anything left of him to find. 

Now Harry's old enough and defeated enough to resign himself to it, to own Nice, Easy, Laidback Harry with an enthusiasm like nobody else, but it still hurts that he knows he doesn't leave an impression. He presses with soft, pleasant fingertips and tentatively says "this is me" and has to stand back and watch as the marks fade before they've sunk deep enough to scar. And sometimes, the parts of himself that perhaps come more easily – fear and selfishness and impatience and irritation – ask to be embraced, because perhaps he wouldn't be so forgettable and droppable if he allowed them to take over. Everyone forgets you if you're nice, the guy who holds your hand when you're drunk and lets you cry about the state of your stupid life into his soft smelling shoulder and buys you cheese and chips from the kebab shop on the way home. Nobody forgets you if you break their heart.

He wants to scar and fuck and break in the way he’s been scarred and fucked and broken. He wants to tear someone apart. 

He watches Zayn bring the omelettes over with a triumphant sort of look on his face and he knows Zayn will forget him.

‘So,’ Zayn says after Harry cuts at his omelette with his fork, one hand occupied with propping his chin up. ‘What’s the matter?’

Harry glances at him, surprised, and Zayn smiles with a strange mix of exasperation and indulgence.

‘You’re pouting, Haz.’

Harry tries and fails to wipe the look from his face. ‘Homesick,’ he says with a shrug, stuffing some egg into his mouth without grace in the hope Zayn won’t ask anymore questions. 

‘Me too,’ Zayn says, frowning a little as he pulls at a string of cheese with his fork.

Harry swallows thickly. ‘You’ve not been here long.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Zayn wrinkles his nose.

‘Aren’t you closer to Bradford here than you were in London?’

‘I guess. But, you know. Signal’s crap here. Can’t even get a Skype connection through my wifi.’ He shakes his head self-deprecatingly. ‘God, I’m such a mama’s boy.’

Harry feels a bit drunk. ‘Sweet.’

Zayn nods, smile pulling at his lips in that horrible way it does. ‘Sweeter than chocolate milk, me.’

‘Sweeter than strawberry laces.’

‘Or a Kit Kat.’

They grin at each other. Harry could die.

‘You missing your granny?’ Zayn asks, turning back to his omelette, and for a moment Harry frowns as he picks black pepper out of his teeth with his tongue because he doesn’t remember telling Zayn about her. 

That’s why getting blackout drunk is never a good idea.

‘Yeah, all the time.’ He licks his lips and watches as Zayn bends to stroke one of the cats.

‘You ring her?’

Harry looks down at the table and shakes his head, not checking whether or not Zayn saw. Instead of elaborating, he says, ‘If you’re homesick, you should come to the pub more often, you know.’

Zayn rolls his eyes. ‘Will you give that up?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘They don’t like me, Haz.’

‘Who? Louis?’

Zayn shrugs. ‘I don’t know. You guys are a unit. I’m really not bothered.’

‘We’re not a unit! Me and Niall are – we’re literally the Help.’

‘They _literally_ love you,’ says Zayn, mimicking him.

‘When it suits them.’

Zayn rolls his eyes. ‘I came last night and just ended up listening to Louis talk about Greenday and the time he drank Liam’s piss when he lost an odd’s on.’ 

‘You had fun!’

Zayn pauses to wet his mouth with his tongue. ‘Well. You flirted with me.’

Harry stops chewing. The egg feels weird and congealed in his mouth. ‘Huh?’

Zayn looks a little flustered. ‘Well, like – you were very drunk. Probably didn’t –’

‘I flirted with you? When?’ he asks with a distinct murmur of horror, not quite able to look at Zayn.

‘At one point you said you thought my ankles were sexy. And you smelled my hair.’

‘Oh God. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s okay, I didn’t mind.’

And before Harry can work out what exactly he means by that, Zayn’s getting up.

‘I have something for you.’

‘Oooh,’ Harry says inanely, because he has nothing else to say. He picks at his eggs. The thrum of his heart is so strong he can feel in his ears, in the rattle of his fingers that hasn’t gone away since last night, and maybe – maybe it’s just because he and Zayn get on so well. He feels so safe around him, so calm and warm and enclosed, like he could tell Zayn anything and he wouldn’t mind. 

Maybe he is falling, but in a different way. Not in the way he’s used to. Not falling for Zayn but for the easiness between them, the bond that feels firm and unbreakable, like a safety harness, all hard rope and wire and steel. Maybe he’s falling because, for the first time, he likes the feeling of being caught. Maybe that’s it.

But then Zayn’s back, standing behind Harry with his hand hovering over the back of Harry’s chair, and the oaky clean smell of him almost knocks Harry out.

‘For you,’ he says, sliding Harry a copy of _Vogue_ , Jourdan Dunn’s smiling, unfair face looking back at the pair of them. 

‘For me?’ Harry says stupidly, looking up at him. 

He blinks down at Harry, looking a bit tense, a bit scared, and Harry feels his heart shudder like a slammed door. He can see the stubble under his chin from down here, the sharp line of his jaw and the impossible fan of his eyelashes and the point of his nose and the curve of his upper lip. He wants to lick his skin until his tongue feels sanded down. 

‘Well, yeah, you’ve been so nice to me, and I, uh – I just know you like it. _Vogue_ , I mean. So I thought…’ He trails off, backing away a bit, as though worried Harry might bite him. He laughs woodenly. ‘You might have this one already, I don’t know. I just saw it in the shop this morning, I thought maybe –’

‘I don’t.’ Harry smiles, watching as Zayn nods to show he’s absorbed this. ‘Thanks, Zayn.’

‘You’re welcome.’

The silence that follows presses at Harry’s hangover headache with blunt fingers, provoking it. Zayn picks up their plates and crosses to put them in the sink, lingering there for longer than necessary and pretending to look out of the window.

‘I don’t imagine many boys from Cheshire were into _Vogue_ like you,’ Zayn remarks, his back still to Harry, and Harry’s frowning again because _when did he say he was from Cheshire?_

He didn’t, did he?

But then Zayn turns, smiling, and Harry wonders what life looks like in the perpetual shadow of those unreal eyelashes, and how it’s possible for someone to smile like that – so kind and sweet and hopeful, all at once. 

‘I, um.’ Harry pauses, picking at the _Barbie_ plaster Niall wrapped around his broken nail. 

He hasn’t told anyone this before. It feels like it might cut him, glass on his tongue, but Zayn is looking at him steadily, leaned up against the counter like a runway model, his beautiful gaze sweetly, charitably focussed on Harry. 

‘Don’t laugh.’

Zayn draws an X over his chest. ‘Cross my heart.’

Harry smiles gently. ‘It’s sort of because of photography. When I did my year abroad, I worked with a photographer in Paris. Mostly fashion stuff.’ He fiddles with his hair. ‘I was, like, massively into it. Photography, I mean.’

‘You did a year abroad in Paris?’

‘Yeah, I had to for my course at uni.’

There’s a pause. ‘You speak French?’

‘Yep.’ Harry bites his lip. ‘I did Law for like, two months, then switched because I wasn’t smart enough and never did the reading. So French. Four years of it.’

Zayn looks like every runway model Harry’s ever spent hours staring at in a magazine, every single one of them joined together, like all the pages have stuck and the ink’s run from one beautiful form to another, merging and blending, and they’ve spat him out, but now, he looks a little bewildered. ‘I never knew that.’

Harry frowns. ‘Why would you? I never told you.’

‘Yeah,’ he mumbles under his breath, almost laughing as he looks away from Harry. 

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Zayn swallows; Harry sees it in the column of his throat. He glances at Harry again, and for the first time ever, he seems almost nervous.

‘That’s why you read Camus, then,’ says Zayn.

‘And why I love photography, mostly,’ Harry says with a nod, ‘although I was into _Vogue_ way before that.’

‘Why?’

Harry holds his gaze. He feels his mouth pull up into a smile, the dimple pulling in his cheek, vision partially obscured by a strand of hair flopping over his eyes. His insides crackle like they’ve been stamped on.

‘It’s – it’s not just loads of pictures of Kate Moss and some adverts for Chanel. It’s like –’ He pauses, swallowing. ‘Okay, _Vogue_ started during the First World War, right?’ 

Zayn nods, his mouth twitching over a smile. ‘Okay.’

‘Yeah. The world was just shit for so many people, their relatives were dying, they felt like tomorrow their whole lives would be over. And _Vogue_ provided something else – a sort of, like… _glimmer_ of what life could be like.’ Harry’s breath hitches, realising he’s getting overexcited but not quite sure how to stop himself. ‘It’s not just fashion.’

Zayn bites his lip. ‘It’s not?’

‘No!’ Harry stands up, playing with the hem of his t-shirt. He looks around the room for it and then strides over to the pile of books by the mirror, snatching up the battered copy of _Brave New World_. ‘Your fave man, Huxley? He was in _Vogue_. Right next to Josephine Baker. And you’d have, like, Charlie Chaplin with Edith Sitwell. And Lee Miller, she was a model, was mates with Picasso, but then she became a war photographer during World War Two. This is – this is _progressive_. A woman, going out to the frontline, reporting on the war, _way_ before the big feminist movements. She told truths through photographs, reported facts no one else would, and put them in a magazine for women, when so often the world acted like it didn’t concern them.’ Harry pauses, bends the book in his hands. ‘It’s become, like, emblematic for people. Of something bigger than them. And I think – I think to be able to make a story out of a photograph, to create something huge out of something so small. Even if it’s just Kate Moss in a vest and knickers. I think it – I think it means something. I think that’s art.’

Zayn’s eyes are searching and soft as his eyebrows lift. Harry feels self-conscious, alarmingly embarrassed, but he also wants to press his nose into Zayn’s stubble and scratch along his neck and lick over his eyelashes. He wants to taste his breath and see if it’s as sweet as the strawberry laces, the chocolate milk. He wants to climb inside Zayn, duck under the scaffolding of his ribs and pull apart his insides, like tearing through a filing cabinet, searching for answers, before lying down and pressing his cheek to Zayn’s heart, feeling it beat against his temple, and align their pulses, because he knows, somehow, that for once he’d feel safe.

‘Well,’ Zayn says gently, and then, in an awful accent, ‘ _c’est fantastique_ , Harry.’

‘ _T’es trop sympa_ ,’ says Harry, mumbling it, and they look at each other for a long moment before bursting into laughter.

Zayn laughs properly, nose scrunching up, eyes curving into lunar crescents. Harry’s chest feels light, wildly impressed at himself and the way he was able to make Zayn laugh, and – he catches sight of himself in the mirror as he turns to put the book back, the pure joy lighting up his face, pulling at his mouth and the skin by his eyes.

He looks so open. So breakable.

And for once, he doesn’t care.


	5. (FIVE) Herb Ritts, 1984, Fred with Tyres

Sometimes – most often in the middle of the night – Harry takes to studying the note. 

It's the handwriting that draws him in, mostly. Broad, loopy, imposing and impetuous. At once it suggests both confidence in its reader and a distrust in itself, the writer. ' _I'm so sorry I missed you. I hope you're okay_ ' is the first line, which Harry always took to be rather insulting considering he was at the time bed bound in a private, often guarded hospital ward, and had weeping, oozing stitches lacing over a jagged line across his abdomen. Was he okay? Well - kind of. 

' _Do look after this for me darling - you can imagine from the contents that this must be our secret. I'll explain when I see you again_.' See you again – this implied that they'd seen each other recently, which they had not. They hadn't seen each other since Harry was six and crying his eyes out as the police escorted her away and she’d barely even pretended to resist. Still, Harry has a habit of bending the truth in the direction of his own interest, warping it with such vigour that it begins to barely resemble its mould in his own mind. He imagines her scribbling this note with all the energy that she failed to put up when being taken – no, dragged, kicking and screaming, that suits him better – from her only son seventeen years ago. He imagines her heart racing as she puts pen to paper, like his does every time he reads it. He imagines her crying for him. He imagines her heart breaking.

Only then does he feel slightly better. 

And then, the ending. ' _Love, Mum_ ' it says, a huge spiky M stealing energy from elsewhere, from the promises of 'we' and 'our', the remaining 'um' trailing behind it like a hesitant shadow. Harry presses his thumb to that 'M', as though stamping his fingerprint to give for police evidence of DNA. DNA which he and this absent ghost share, an irrefutable fact that binds them together despite efforts made to pull them apart. As long as they're both alive, they have to be reunited: they share blood and spit and important strings of essential internal body matter, and so the universe _has_ to bring them back together. His whole life has led up to their reunification. 

His whole life is tethered to that 'M', balancing in the middle dip and hoping it doesn't tip over. 

Harry’s searched for love since he was six years old and was bundled into the back of a police car, tiny hands pressed against the window as the engine hummed itself awake, buzzed under his knees, and the car carried him away around the corner. 

Harry loves his grandparents. He loves Gemma, loves Joni, loved their little house in Cheshire with the swing in the garden and the cavernous, gloomy attic he climbed into when he was having a strop and the wide fields and long, open roads. He loves them, the life they gave him, the familiar musk of his granny’s perfume, the stiff line of his grandpa’s back as he stood for every national anthem played on television.

Nothing can take away from how much Harry loves them. Nothing in the world will ever feel as safe as a mug of his granny’s tea, or a squeeze of the wrist from his grandpa. Nothing that he ever did – not his angry, over-sexed, ostentatious teenaged rebellion, not ignoring their phone calls at university, not even this, now, the imposed dead silence that Harry isn’t at liberty to defy – can ever stop them from loving him. 

But he can’t lie to himself about this. He’s been alive for nearly twenty-four years, and for seventeen of them he’s been waiting for her. Tearing himself apart for her, aching for her, dreaming of her, not even because he wants to see her again, although it is mostly that. He just wants to _know_ – know why she hasn’t come back for him, know why she took him away and not Gemma. Know what she’s doing now, and if she’s happy. Know why she chose Harry to look after this money over everyone else.

He would do anything to be loved in the way people are in films, in the way he observes in strangers; a love that has you reaching for each other, like you both possess the gravitational force of neighbouring planets, like the stars have aligned for you. He would turn himself inside out and pull out his insides and hang himself out to dry if he could have it. If he was allowed it. 

He knows that. But he knows too, that this must at least in part exist because he needs to find her, to look her in the eye and get his answers. He knows that he would walk the whole earth if he knew she was at the other side of it. He knows he put his life on the line for it; that’s what he’s doing now, isn’t it? He’d die just to watch her walk towards him again, to prove at last that he’s worthy of someone’s love. 

In his dreams, he sits in that car, hands against the window, and she turns and walks away.

There's a confidential groan from the floorboards as Harry folds up the note and slips it back into the red rucksack bag, nestling the note amongst the money, and sets the slab of wood back into place.

 

-

 

On their fifteenth date, they try the boat again – this time, they go at a reasonable time and Harry drives after promising to tidy up Mark’s garden, and he makes Zayn take travel sickness pills borrowed from the twins before he climbs aboard. Zayn spreads out on one of two beach towels loaned by the Tomlinsons, Wayfarers perched on his nose, shivering gently in his big Nike hoodie.

Once they get out far enough, Harry anchors and lies down beside Zayn, picking up his book. They read together quietly for a while, until Zayn starts pointing out shapes in the sky and Harry lets his book tent against his chest, hands behind his head, digging into his beanie. Zayn’s head is so close to his arm, hair brushing gently against his elbow when he shifts, and when he turns to look at Harry, smiling winningly, his breath hits Harry’s armpit.

They go back to the shore for dinner, sitting on a wall with their legs dangling down to the sea, eating scampi out of a paper cone. There’s a couple near them, her stood between his legs as he perches on the wall, their fingers grazing as she smiles down at him with cherry-stained lips. He gazes up at her with such adoration Harry almost has to look away, but he’s a masochist and he loves love and he stares at them until he can feel the pain of it in his chest. That’s what it’s like, watching love from the outside, the voyeuristic, cutting thrill of pressing your nose against glass and peering through the fog of your own breath. She brushes her lips against his forehead and the glass cracks against Harry’s palms, shatters against his face, and it hurts. It’s sweet and simple and it aches like toothache, and it’s everything he’s never had and all he’s ever wanted, and even though it hurts, he turns his face to the shower of jagged glass, embraces it gladly. It’s only real if he feels himself bleed. 

‘Stop staring,’ Zayn whispers, but Harry can’t even be embarrassed when he turns back, smiling and running a salty hand through his hair. 

‘They’re so beautiful, though,’ he says. ‘They deserve to be looked at.’

That night, lying in bed, he closes his eyes and all he sees is Zayn, lying on the boat, fingers clasped over his chest, head thrown back. He imagines those hands on him, squeezing him, pulling him, and then he imagines those hands on his face, holding his own hands, and he thinks of the way the sky brushed against Zayn’s skin and he comes with a sigh, thinking breathe, breathe, breathe. 

 

\- 

 

October draws in cold and bright, the promise of short-wearing sunshine blinking at them from the horizon but not quite tiptoeing close enough. At this time of year, everything hovers in stasis; the trees quiver like they’re waiting for the sun to turn itself up hotter, the waves lick at the shore like they’re tasting it, unsure.

Niall gets a Bake Off screen-test. He runs all the way home from the post office, letter clutched in his hand, cheeks crimson and eyes watery. Zayn is round – they’ve started making a scrapbook together out of Harry’s old _Vogues_ , which Liam thinks is the ‘saddest, boring-est thing in the world’, but Harry doesn’t care because there’s nothing quite like watching Zayn concentrate with his tongue between his teeth as he cuts around Naomi Campbell with the care and precision of a heart surgeon. 

Harry’s fucked. It is what it is.

Niall spills into Harry’s room as Zayn and Harry are working on their latest double page spread. He’s breathless, hair a mess, and before anyone can say a word he scoops Harry up by his elbows and collapses against him, screaming things about Mary Berry and London and bakewell tarts into his ear. Harry laughs, picking Niall up and twirling him around, letting him press kisses to his neck, and when they draw apart, Niall beams at him.

‘It’s happening, Kit Kat! TV! Fame!’ He grins, pinching Harry’s cheek. ‘You can finally fuck Paul Hollywood!’

Harry rolls his eyes. ‘Because that was clearly my agenda all along.’

Niall just pinches him again. ‘5th January, babe – London. We’re going.’ His smile is so bright Harry almost squints. ‘Is Liam around? Think we should have a night at the pub tonight, right? To celebrate!’

‘It’s a Friday. We have work tomorrow. It’s milking –’

‘Liven up, you OAP.’ And then he’s barrelling from the room, leaving the echo of a laugh and the smell of Lynx Africa. Harry stares after him, shaking his head, but he can’t stop the smile from hijacking his face.

He turns to Zayn, mouth open to make a joke about Niall’s buns or something equally as tragic, but the laughter slips from his mouth like smoke.

Zayn’s already got his coat on.

‘Gotta go,’ he says without preamble. There’s a look on his face like he’s been punched.

‘What?’ Harry asks, a bit breathlessly. ‘Why?’

‘Need to – got the cats to, like, feed and whatever,’ Zayn mumbles. He brushes past Harry without looking at him. ‘See you later.’

‘Zayn –’

But he’s already gone.

 

-

 

Harry runs, sweat dripping down the valley of his spine, his eyes itchy like he’d been witness to something he shouldn’t have. His hair is thick with the smell of rain and his calves scream at him and he keeps slipping on the grass but he doesn’t stop – just runs until he’s breathless.

There’s something – something that makes it feel like that leaky tap in the bathroom has taken residence over his heart, dripping, over and over again.

A thought, a suspicion, that’s roused in his chest with stringent reluctance, a small gale that clings with anxious claws to his spinal cord, and his brain desperately creates hurricanes of agitation to get rid of it. _You’re fucking paranoid, Harry. You’re paranoid and sad and lonely and you’re projecting. You’re obsessing. You’re wrong._

It’s as though the thought has clotted in his brain and bleeds out all over the whole world, though. He sees it everywhere. 

Zayn’s voice, his smile. _Are you?_

Isn’t this what he wanted? He wanted to feel sick, to feel his head spin, to ache so much he can feel it like somebody’s zipped open his chest and left him all open and gutted and broken. He wanted to want someone so much he feels like he can’t breathe. 

But he can’t help but feel like the reason he’s breathless isn’t because his heart is swollen too big – it’s that there’s a hand around his neck, squeezing tighter and tighter, and Harry can’t see who it belongs to. 

He checks the door’s locked eight times when he gets in, just to be sure.

There’s a low sound of surprise behind him and Harry jumps so violently his knee hits the door with a sharp sound and a flash of searing pain.

‘Fuck!’

‘Christ, you scared me,’ Liam says from the depths of the darkness in the hall, hand on his chest, cereal bowl clutched in hand. 

‘Sorry.’ Harry takes a step, winces at the pressure on his knee. He’s wet haired and miserable, and even the sight of the pore strip on Liam’s nose when he flicks the light on doesn’t help. 

‘Oh, Haz. What’s the matter?’ Liam asks, forehead pinching. ‘You look like someone just shat on your McDonalds.’

Harry shakes his head and decides to generously ignore that analogy. ‘I hate boys.’

‘Oh dear.’ Liam ruffles Harry’s hair and smiles indulgently, transparently proud of himself for being so markedly straight and feeling as though he’s helping with troubles out of his own reach. ‘Trouble in paradise?’

‘What paradise?’

‘You and Zayn. Bosom pals nowadays, right?’

‘Harhar,’ Harry says emotionlessly. He ducks away from Liam’s hand and heads to the stairs. ‘How was the pub?’

‘All right. Your man came.’ Liam smiles coyly. ‘Left pretty early when he realised you weren’t coming.’

Harry decides not to let his heart make too big of a deal of that, seeing as he’s forced himself to acknowledge that to pull Zayn would be quite an extraordinary triumph of will seeing as – as is the story of Harry’s life – he’s straight and heartbroken and not interested. 

He says goodnight to Liam and heads up through the mostly sleeping house – he smells weed through Louis’ bedroom door and almost feels like joining, for an odd moment. The spectre of an ugly bruise pulses in his knee and he pushes his bedroom door open with his shoulder, sighing when he sees Bess curled up on his duvet.

‘Bessie,’ he groans impatiently, his face contorting into a self-pitying moue when she barely even lifts one eyelid. ‘Why didn’t Niall put you out? Silly girl.’ He yanks off his sweaty, damp t-shirt and checks briefly under the floorboards, satisfying himself, before peeling off his shorts as well. Bess watches him, seemingly unimpressed by his pale and worn and too-skinny naked body, shivering in the middle of the room as he clicks his tongue at her.

‘Move, Bess,’ he says in his best commanding voice, which has never worked on anyone in his lifetime. ‘ _Please._ You take up all the bed.’

Predictably she ignores him, and he crosses the room with a scowl to push her off. He notices the glimmer of it before he can work out what it actually is, a glinting beneath her stomach that sends a punch straight to his solar plexus. He stands there beside her, so frightened he doesn’t dare to breath, and fishes it out carefully between two fingers.

A silver flip phone.

He shoves Bess out the way, not playing anymore, and she grunts indignantly, getting to her feet with a yawn and jumping off the bed without grace. 

Underneath her was an unravelled, carefully smoothed Kit Kat wrapper, label side down.

And on it, in black _Sharpie –_

_Sunday at 3pm_

_Don’t be fucking late_

 

-

 

It’s so sunny Harry has to wear sunglasses. He feels as though it should be raining – pathetic fallacy and that – but he has to squint through the windshield even through the protection of his glasses, urging the old engine forward with impatience. It splutters under his feet, so used to heaving itself over grass mounds that it seems surprised by the flat of the road, and Harry has to drown its indignant noises by cranking up the volume on the old Beach Boys cassette he’s insured is permanently jammed into the tape player.

Bess is beside him, her shaggy head stuck out the window as she rides shotgun. Sometimes, when he feels he’s about to plunge into the black depths of a panic attack, he reaches out an arm blindly and she licks his palm, and at least for a moment, it makes him feel better. 

He parks the car after he’s driven for two hours, finding a lay-by, and sits there for a series of long, mournful breaths, staring at the big obnoxious phone line cables he can see in the distance. He tries to carefully ignore the suddenly inescapable creak of his normal bodily functions – a dragging heave of breath, a pounding drum of heartbeat, a sickening slosh of blood. Normally he loves it; now he can’t stand it.

‘Love you,’ he whispers to Bess, kissing between her ears gently. It was selfish bringing her out with him, as he imagines he’ll be told on the phone exactly how he’s going to die, chopped up into small nugget-sized pieces and shoved into a suitcase, or his brains blasted all over the walls of the unit like some ugly modern art.

His watch says it’s eight minutes to three. He winds down the window for Bess, picks up the red rucksack, and clambers out of the car with shaking legs, not looking back.

The road is empty and much too hot, sun bounding off the black tarmac and searing Harry through his sweater and jeans. His hair is just long enough now to tie the top layer back into a tiny bun and his forehead feels dry and itchy, burning, as he drags himself over to the reception, savouring each step like he’ll never walk again. 

He sits by the roadside, grasping at the dry grass and drawing his knees up to his chest. He’s not opened the phone once – as he does it now, his heart hammers so wildly he can feel it under his tongue, the whole muscle pulsing disgustingly, his mouth too slick. 

The background is a picture of him. For a moment Harry blinks at himself – he looks pale, too thin for his build, his cheekbones and jaw prominent in his face. His eyelids are slick and his hair wilting and pathetic, and the sweater he got from the Sorbonne drowns him, falls past his wrists and his waist. 

He knows this picture. It was taken by Niall, last week. 

He feels a shiver of horror and clicks on the button for photos – he doesn’t need to search through them to know they’re all pictures from Niall’s phone. Selfies of him and Niall, of Harry and the sheep, of Harry and Bess, grinning and laughing and turning his face from the camera. There are pictures of Louis and Liam, too, and one in the corner of Harry and Zayn, the pair of them stood side by side at the jukebox at the pub, looking at each other shyly. 

He doesn’t know what it means. The back of his throat feels sharp as he snaps the phone shut, taking it all in, and the money in the bag on his back feels like it weighs more than his whole body, like it’s bending his spine backwards and trying to snap it in two. 

Somebody’s got into Niall’s phone. 

The phone vibrates in his hand, almost violently. 

He stares at it, not even daring to blink. His blood starts to curdle.

He slowly flips it open, and stays silent.

‘Hello?’ says a voice after a pause – light, feminine, and Harry’s whole body feels like it quakes, the impact of a punch ripping through him. 

He can’t speak. He just chokes.

‘Anyone there?’ she says again. 

It’s definitely her. He hasn’t heard her voice in seventeen years, but he knows. He’s certain.

‘Mum?’ Harry breathes.

There’s a horrifying moment where he thinks she might hang up, but then she squeals loudly. ‘Darling! Hello baby!’

Harry grips the phone with both hands, the rucksack dropping to his feet with a thud. ‘Oh, Mum. Fuck. It’s you.’

‘It’s me, darling! How are you?’

Harry wants to laugh. He really does. Instead he sniffs and closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he sees her – radiant and brilliant, startlingly cold. 

‘I’m okay. How are you?’

‘I’m great! Just did a bunch of my Christmas shopping today – have you ever been to Selfridges? It’s gorgeous!’

Harry gulps thickly, his head spinning. He tries to speak and the first time, nothing but a garbled sound comes out, so he bites at his lip hard and tries again. ‘Uh, no I haven’t.’

‘It’s lovely, darling. Maybe we should go when you come to London!’

‘I’m – when am I coming to London?’

_Come back here and I’ll fucking kill you. Remember that._

‘I thought we could have lunch! How does…’ She pauses theatrically. ‘Ooh, how about January 5th?’

The day of Niall’s screentest. An almost unbelievable coincidence, but Harry’s so stunned by the sound of her voice, by the childlike excitement, that he nods furiously.

His imagination is well practised in blatantly ignoring the truth. He’s so used to lying now that it’s more than easy to do it to himself.

‘Okay,’ he breathes. ‘Okay, yeah. Okay.’

‘I know a lovely place, darling. The Gringham in Hammersmith. 3 o’clock. Yes?’

_Come back here and I’ll fucking kill you. Remember that._

‘Yes. Yes, yes please. Yeah.’

‘Okay. How exciting!’ She coos like Niall does to the sheep and Harry nearly sobs again. ‘I can’t wait to see you, my baby. It’s been so long.’

‘So long. Mum –’

‘I’ve got to go. I’ll see you then, Kit Kat?’

Harry’s heart seizes. ‘Okay. Mum, just –’

‘Bye. Lots of love!’

The line goes dead, and for a long time Harry stares at the phone, not breathing, before he throws it so hard into the road the back of the phone breaks away from the front, flinging itself across the lane and disappearing into the shrub.

The glass doesn’t shatter, though. Not like he wanted it to. 

His lips taste like salt, and he swipes his hand under his nose. The rucksack is rough under his palms and he wants to set it in on fire and watch it burn, wants to throw it into the middle of the sea and scream as it sinks, but he has to suffice for pulling at the zip hard, listening to the tearing sound as it snaps open and shut, over and over, and feeling that same pull in his heart.

 

-

 

Harry goes straight to Posh Wanker Max’s, uninvited.

He wasn’t exactly happy with Harry showing up out of the blue – their relationship is strictly limited to beckonings at midnight, lustfully desperate phone calls which Harry hasn’t gathered the self-respect to reject – but Harry managed to convince him with one of his best blow jobs and the promise of multiple orgasms. He delivers – of course he does – but only gets off himself when Max, fully naked, ruts against Harry, fully clothed, and presses down on Harry’s throat until he can’t breathe, until his vision spots with black and his breath rattles like a chainsaw in his throat. 

It’s not enough. 

Max looks like he might have a seizure when Harry suggests they fuck, despite the absence of condoms.

‘Mate,’ he says, in his horrible rah boarding school accent, scratching come off his stomach, ‘I’m not – it’s just a bit –’

‘Gay?’ suggests Harry.

‘Well.’ He shrugs like he’s apologising, which he’s not. ‘A bit AIDS-y.’

Harry blinks. 

‘Pardon?’

‘You can’t just show up here uninvited.’ Max sits up straight, cracking the bones in his back. ‘I have a girlfriend, Haz. You need to give me warning.’

Harry stares at the ceiling. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means…’ Max pauses. ‘Just, remember not to catch feelings. I’m not – I’m not like you.’ 

Harry laughs. ‘ _Do I sound like a...? A what? Like a Republican?_ ’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Max scowls at him. ‘You’re weird.’

Outside, Bess waits in the car. 

 

-

 

‘We’ve not done anything crazy for a while,’ Zayn says, his voice quiet against the commotion of the barn. 

Harry glances up from the sheep he’s holding, looking pleased. They’re stationed inside the barn because the vet is here, scanning the pregnant ewes as they enter their second trimester. Louis brought a CD player in from the house, and he and Liam bickered over the CD selection for a good half hour, over the top of the poor vet who was trying to explain uterine prolapses to the farmhands. 

Zayn stood beside Harry, their hips grazing, and they smiled clandestinely at each other whenever their fingers brushed. Louis wins with Britney over Mariah – ‘good choice,’ whispers Zayn – and since then he’s been humming along to _My Prerogative_ as they act as human sheepdogs in the dim light of the barn. It has Harry’s heart seizing – the sight of him stood there with his arms gently resting atop the makeshift fencing, wearing a hoodie way too big for him with a cigarette burn on the sleeve. He feels as though being around Zayn should be less comforting than it is, for boys who are just friends. 

‘You mean we’ve not been on a date in a while?’ Harry says, smile pulling at his mouth. Zayn rolls his eyes. ‘This weekend?’

Zayn grins back just as Niall shouts out an expletive that splices through the barn. Lambing season is always tense for Niall; Harry emotionally detached himself from it when both mother and lamb died in his first spring and he spent four days crying, but Niall hasn’t yet managed to pull himself away. The cause of the drama becomes apparent – Liam and Louis have brought in Louis’ laughably expensive toy helicopter and are practising flying it directly into Niall’s head. 

The vet stands beside Niall with his ultrasound scanner in hand, unimpressed.

‘They’re meant to be learning how to do this,’ Harry says with a disgruntled sniff. ‘Tom wants them to learn about lambing for when Lou takes over.’

‘He’s got a better chance of Louis ending up with a Nobel prize,’ Zayn remarks, his eyebrows suggesting disdain, and Harry laughs delightedly. 

‘Maybe he will. For jam making services to the world.’

Zayn grins and shakes his head, hair curling over his forehead. His eyes are bright and curious, like he enjoys this, and it makes Harry feel tall. 

‘Seems weird,’ Zayn muses, leaned against the makeshift fence and smiling softly as Harry sends one ewe in Niall’s direction and does battle with her particularly unhappy sister who wrestles between the clamp of his thighs. ‘You and Niall do all the work and get none of the credit.’

‘Well, it’s just a wool farm,’ Harry explains, gritting his teeth and getting a hold of her hooves with a stern look. ‘Not meat. So it’s not hard. All we have to do is keep them happy and make sure they don’t escape. Ow – careful, Mabel!’ He frowns at the ewe and presses on her noses gently as admonishment. ‘Anyway, they’ll go in the barn now till it’s warm enough to be outside, so it’s easy peasy from here.’ He shrugs and smiles. ‘All nice and cosy in time for Christmas. Aren’t you, Mabey?’

When Zayn doesn’t reply, Harry glances up at him curiously, and finds Zayn’s watching him, his hands loosely draped over the fence. 

They look at each other for a long moment. Harry cocks his head to the side, like Zayn’s asked a question.

He’s made it his mission recently to touch everything in Zayn’s house, running throbbing fingers over all of Zayn’s books and his records and the graffiti on the walls, kissing the piano when Zayn’s not in the room, pressing his face to all of the cushions on the sofa. When he goes upstairs under the proviso of visiting the bathroom, he sneaks into Zayn’s room and touches stuff in there, too, the ashtray by his bed and the half-drunk cup of tea and the bookmark folded into the novel by his pillow and the clothes he’s left dumped on the floor and all the picture frames on the dresser. He sees pictures of the girl he suspects is Georgie – small and blonde and smiley, grinning with her arms wrapped around Zayn in various cute, perfect shots, one for every season – and she looks like a fucking princess, complex and interesting and beautiful. Harry looks down at himself and all he can see is farm – holey jeans and dirty fingernails and calloused hands – and he knows the plaid shirts he always wears, the wellies, the big ugly sweaters, suggest his entire existence. Nothing like Georgie at all, then, and every time, Harry scowls at her and resists the urge to slam the frames face down so Zayn never looks at her again.

But now he’s looking at Harry – _really_ looking at him – and Harry has a sudden urge to touch him, to reach out and press his thumb to Zayn’s mouth. It’s a hard, insistent feeling, one that makes Harry bunch Mabel’s wool up in his fists, but before he can even work himself up to letting go Zayn beats him to it, reaching and unhooking a bit of hair from the corner of Harry’s mouth. 

He’s so gentle it almost makes Harry want to cry. His gaze is warmer than the sun and harder than the ground; it wraps around Harry and swallows him and his heart flutters like the wind’s caught it.

In the background, Harry can hear Louis and Liam’s epic dissection of Arsenal’s new manager, and the sheep wriggles between Harry’s knees, but Zayn’s brushing Harry’s hair behind his ear and all of a sudden there’s a look in his eye that makes Harry’s heart stutter like a dodgy exhaust pipe. 

Zayn reaches out with his long, soft fingers, pressing them into Harry’s neck, right over the little grape bruises there from Max’s hands last night. Harry gulps, heart in his throat, and watches as Zayn lines his fingers up gently, pushing hard enough that Harry nearly gasps.

‘Big night?’ Zayn says, and his voice – the way it catches - reminds Harry of something, a feeling he’s had before, but he can’t place it and he feels sick, like he might vomit. 

Zayn’s still staring at him. Harry nods, lips tightening, and Zayn removes his hand and looks away.

‘Nice,’ says Zayn.

Harry doesn’t know what to say. 

‘Send me Mabel, Haz,’ says Niall flatly. He’s barely speaking to Harry either – Harry missed Sunday dinner last night, and they _promised_ months ago to never leave one man standing. They did a spit handshake and everything, a Lost Boys guarantee. Harry releases Mabel and smiles at Niall warmly; he barely even holds Harry’s gaze.

‘So the weekend,’ says Harry, turning back to Zayn. His voice sounds a little quick, a little desperate. ‘How about we drive to –’

‘Don’t know if I’m feeling up it this weekend,’ Zayn says, not looking at him. ‘I’m learning a new piece on the cello, and it’s, uh. Proving difficult. So.’

Harry’s heart sinks so low he can feel it in his toes, the way they curl in his wellies in fear. _No_ , he wants to shout. 

‘All right,’ he says, and he must sound as sick as he feels, because Zayn looks back at him and tries to smile.

‘Maybe. I’ll let you know. Yeah?’

‘Okay. Yeah. Okay.’

Harry wonders when they’re ever going to say something that’s the truth.

 

-

 

Harry’s ignoring Zayn and he knows it’s making Zayn’s skin crawl. 

He ignores the press of Zayn’s leg against his under the table, the brush of Zayn’s foot against his own. He ignores the way Zayn’s staring at him, incessantly, unwaveringly, his gaze burning into the side of Harry’s face as Harry talks desperately to Niall and tries not to surrender to the heat of it. He ignores the brush of Zayn’s fingers against his back, ignores it harder when Zayn trails his fingers against Harry’s spine, and he can practically _feel_ Zayn’s frustration rolling off him in a scarlet, seismic waves, catching on Harry’s skin and making it burn. He’s getting drunker and drunker at Harry’s side, speaking louder and laughing harder, almost obnoxiously, and for some reason, this is what finally endears him to Louis, who’s now joking and bantering with Zayn like they’re old friends.

And Harry hates it. He hates the whole thing, hates everything about this stupid town and this stupid pub and his stupid feelings, but he sits there stiffly and doesn’t move because he doesn’t want to lose the feeling of Zayn’s leg against his own. 

Zayn said he was busy this weekend, and Harry had respected that, given Zayn a wide berth of sad, self-conscious space all week because for whatever reason, he felt as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. 

And the whole thing turned out to be bullshit.

Because Zayn’s here.

‘Harry,’ says Zayn softly, his hand still on Harry’s back, just above the waistband of his jeans. It’s the first time Harry’s been addressed directly by Zayn since Monday afternoon and he looks over at him, carefully expressionless.

He wants to kiss the embarrassed smile off his face, lick over the curve of his Cupid’s bow, see if it tastes as sweet as it looks. 

‘Yes?’ says Harry, pouting his lips just a bit more than he needs to and feeling things inside him jolt, like they’ve been shaken, when Zayn watches his mouth. 

And considering this is what Harry wanted, he suddenly feels very out of his depth.

‘Thought I might ask for Nicola’s number,’ says Zayn.

There’s a heightened pause. Everything feels blurry and terrifying and Harry’s heart is aching in a way that’s so familiar but so not, as well, and he presses his nails into his palms in the absence of being allowed to touch before he says, ‘Fine.’

‘Fine?’

‘Fine,’ Harry says, shrugging. ‘Do what you want.’

Zayn presses his hand a little harder against Harry’s back. ‘What do _you_ want me to do?’

‘I don’t care what you do.’

That’s so unconvincing that Zayn doesn’t even pretend to believe him. ‘Harry –’

‘I want you to get over Georgie. That’s why you’re here, right?’ Harry shrugs again, petulancy and sulkiness leaking from his sour expression into the marginal space between them like sulphur, rotten and stale and dense. ‘So if you need to fuck her, fuck her.’

Zayn shifts, his jaw twitching. ‘It’s not about _fucking_ her –’

‘You’re fit, she’s fit. It’s meant to be, isn’t it? How lovely.’ 

_Oh dear._

He wants to burn holes in his horrified face with the end of Zayn’s unlit cigarette, sat on the table between them as though waiting for one of them to snatch it as a means of escape.

Zayn blinks at him, stunned. ‘Right.’

Harry swipes his tongue over his mouth. He can _feel_ his blood, feel it reddening his cheeks and his neck, and everything’s tense and he doesn’t know how to shake it off. ‘Probably be good for you to get some, anyway,’ he finds himself saying, his voice a little deeper than before. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Zayn looks down at his pint glass, clearly embarrassed, his brows drawing in. ‘I hadn’t – I don’t think of it like that.’ He stares at the table intently. ‘It’s only ever been her. Before now.’

Harry resists the urge to fling himself against the wall. _It’s only ever been her._ Georgie’s omnipotent presence in Zayn’s past and present, her autocratic ownership of everything he’s ever been able to give to somebody else. 

He stares at him, bewildered. He misses the force of Zayn’s gaze on his face and quite suddenly hates Nicola, hates Georgie, hates himself for not knowing what to do about this. He downs about half of his pint and swipes his hand over the wetness around his mouth, chest burning. 

‘You’ve only ever… with her?’

Zayn inhales loudly and nods. ‘Doesn’t mean I’m inexperienced. I’m just really experienced with – with one person.’ He looks up at Harry, eyeing the skin of his neck even though the bruises have faded now. ‘Do you think I should go for Nicola then?’

Harry swallows against the barrage of truth that hurtles up his throat.

‘If you think it’ll help,’ he says flatly, and Zayn looks up at him sharply, searching for something in Harry’s face that Harry doesn’t know he wants to share. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want jealousy, aching, tight jealousy that makes the beat of his heart feel like the swinging blade of an axe, splicing his chest over and over. Abruptly aware of how close they’re sitting, just inches apart, far too intimate to be friendly, he turns away and back to Niall.

Zayn’s hand drops from his back and doesn’t return.

It’s fine for a while. Niall talks about Project Runway and The Eagles and makes Harry smile minutely when he does his impression of Tom’s best mate Alan with the unfortunate spitting habit, but Niall gets up to go to the bar when Louis and Zayn start swapping sex stories, esoteric lewd stupid straight boy stories that Harry and Niall have spent a whole lifetime on the edge of, ostracised from, and Harry wants to cry because this isn’t Zayn. He’s doing it on purpose and it’s setting Harry’s teeth on edge, catching in his throat until he wants to scream till his lungs rip in two, and he gets up to join Niall. 

He hooks his chin over Niall’s shoulder at the bar, hands on his waist, and Niall smiles at Harry over his shoulder. ‘You okay?’ 

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Harry croaks, glancing over his shoulder back to the booth and nearly sobbing when he sees Nicola standing there where Harry just was sat, looking down at Zayn with a stack of empty pint glasses in one hand. She’s smiling prettily and playing with her hair and his eyes are trained on her, focussed and bright. 

Harry knows how it feels to have that gaze on you. 

He turns back around with pink cheeks, staring at the bar so hard his eyes burn.

‘What’s the matter?’ Niall asks gently. ‘Want me to get you a drink?’

Harry just nods pathetically. He thinks of Nicola, her soft plump mouth and long hair and big, mascara-d eyes, and he feels his fists close over the bar. That’s what Zayn wants. That’s what every guy Harry’s ever craved, ever felt desperately, awfully gone for, wants. He sets himself up for disappointment every time because you can make yourself funnier, or nicer – you can pretend to be smarter, or calmer, or friendlier, but he can’t be what a straight boy wants and he can’t make them want him. He’s not been wanted by people he’s loved since he was five-years-old, and before now chasing that feeling – manufacturing your own rejection – was a way of controlling it, owning it, but now it just feels sad. 

‘You upset about Zayn?’ Niall says after he’s flagged down the barman, eyes flickering with worry over Harry’s anguished expression. 

Harry bites his lip. ‘That obvious?’

‘Martians are aware of it, mate.’

Harry glances over Niall’s shoulder back at Zayn, freezing when he notices Zayn’s standing now, a slither of space between him and Nicola.

He picks up his pint, gulping down as much of it as he can, until some runs down his cheek and drips onto his collarbone. He sets the glass down with shaking fingers and tries to ignore the fact his heart is actually wailing at him, his head all fuzzy and sharp and dripping, like his brain is melting.

‘I’m gonna go home,’ he says, and Niall just stares at him, because Harry has never left this pub before being so drunk he can’t walk straight, unless he’s been summoned by Max or any of his predecessors. 

He kisses Niall on the knuckles, pulls his hood up over his hair, and walks straight out without saying goodbye. He doesn’t look over. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

 

-

 

The house is cold and glaringly quiet and everything in Harry is humming as he tries to make sense of himself. All of the floorboards creak like they’re screaming, like trapped spirits in a Ouija board, and when he passes Tom and Mrs T’s room, the whisper of the television feels hauntingly disconnected, like a voice from another world. The voice says something about hedge funds and the home secretary – Harry’s not entirely sure who the home secretary is nowadays. They might as well be talking about Mars.

He lies down on his bed and presses his hands to his eyes and breathes, in and out, counting to three on each breath. His breath pulls in slowly, heaves with the sharp medical reminder of childhood asthma attacks and a teenage smoking habit. He holds his breath until it hurts, wondering what would happen if he held it forever, and then he leaps up, pacing around the room, a hand in his hair.

He texts Max, a little desperately, asking if he’s home. He needs to touch someone, needs to remind himself what he does and who he is, why he’s here. But Max doesn’t reply and the darkness presses in on him, creeping under his skin and curling up in a ball around his frantic heart, so he strips off all his clothes and digs out his lube and lies back on the bed and tries to wank, furiously squirming against the sheets as he fists himself over and over, contemplating maybe fingering himself as well before he gives up with a huff, too distracted, too worked up. He storms off to the shower and stands there floppily for a long time, letting the water punch over his shoulders and claw at the ache in his back that doesn’t fade anymore.

A word slithers in that he hasn’t allowed himself to entertain since he came to Catterlock. Half of him wants to scrub it out of himself, scour at his skin until he bleeds it away, but the other half wants it probably more than anything else.

He thinks about it, water clinging to his bottom lip as he writes _Hi_ on the shower screen with his index finger. This isn’t what he thought it would feel like – _really_ feel like, after discarding the numerous episodes of self-induced infatuation as temporary distractions. He thought it’d wash him clean, make him new, but instead of finding himself out at some glorious sea, floating, he finds that when the tide comes in it turns his gums to sand and his teeth to rock and they burn as they pour down his throat.

Maybe it just feels different, when it’s real. He’d swallow whole oceans to know it was felt in return, let the salt scratch his heart red raw. 

Maybe it’s meant to feel like this.

Harry writes _ZAYN_ next to the Hi in big block capitals, as if to say _I do. I’m sure I do._

Spidery strings of light are peeking through the curtains as he reenters his bedroom, towelling himself off and peeling on a new pair of boxers and socks for his cold feet. For the first time in ages, maybe half a year, he feels claustrophobic, trapped in this shitty town with nothing to entertain him but all the books and magazines he’s read hundreds of times. He’s been spoiled by Zayn and nights spent chasing the sky and chocolate milk and all the snatches of excitement they brought, all the teasing glimpses of what life could be like. Because Zayn is that – he’s modern, he’s new, he’s all city and smoke and loose, worn smiles, like he’s seen everything and Harry’s seen nothing, and it makes Harry ache. He stands fidgeting in the middle of his bedroom and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

He doesn’t even know Zayn’s birthday. He just knows Zayn touches him like he’s breakable and he cooked Harry eggs when Harry was sad. 

He almost doesn’t hear the knock on the door the first time – it’s faint, sighing, and he pauses in the act of checking under the floorboards before mentally berating himself and putting it down to the old joinery readjusting. But he does – he definitely hears it the second time, and panic grips him like a fishhook, tearing at his throat. 

He stands completely still, eyes wide as saucers, arms tense at his sides. 

Tom and Mrs T will be asleep now. The girls will too – that’s good. That’s important.

Maybe Liam or Louis forgot their keys; maybe Niall did. Maybe the three of them have learned out to knock instead of scaling the drainpipe (Louis), sleeping on the doorstep (Liam) or rousing Bess from sleep and embroiling her to bark at Harry’s window until he wakes up (Niall), but somehow Harry doubts it.

He walks down the stairs slowly, eyes wide, time oozing and dripping like wet tarmac. There’s a third knock – louder – as Harry’s on the last staircase, treading on his toes like a cat. All the curtains downstairs are shut and he’s glad for it, but even so, the blindness is terrifying, Tobe Carpenter-esque. He shuffles very slowly to the kitchen and eases open a drawer, reaching for the knife he’s seen the Tomlinsons use to slice up steak.

His heart beats in his ears thickly, like he’s hanging upside down, as he holds the knife behind his back with one hand and pads back to the hallway, closing his eyes for a moment and exhaling – enjoying it. It sweeps through his chest like a cool, stroking hand, soothing him, and he savours it with deliberate slowness. His hand flexes around the knife, getting a good solid grip, before he reaches for the door handle.

It opens, and he almost drops the knife.

‘Harry,’ Zayn breathes, collapsing forward onto him with a rush of cold air, his head against Harry’s neck. ‘God, why did you go?’

‘What?’ Harry croaks, but Zayn’s hands are all over him, clinging to him, and Harry feels strangely drunk and hungover at the same time, his head spinning.

‘I turned around and you’d gone.’ He pulls back, eyes round and wide and hurt, lower lip actually jutting out. His mouth is tellingly wet, drooping at the corners, and the tight skin of his cheekbones are stung pink from the cold and the alcohol. ‘Are you cross with me?’

‘You can’t be here,’ Harry whispers, clinging to the knife so hard he’s beginning to lose feeling in his fingers. ‘You can’t just come over, Zayn.’ 

Zayn presses his fingers into Harry’s back, pulling him closer. ‘Liam said I could,’ he says, smiling dazedly, and Harry has to take a moment to remember how to breathe because his thinly veiled groin is pressed right against Zayn’s, denim against cotton. 

‘It’s not Liam’s house!’

‘You’re cold, Haz,’ Zayn points out helpfully, frowning with that horribly adorable pout again. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

The tension after that is more than palpable – it feels like it comes from within both of them, oozes out of their mouths thickly, spreads through the air between them.

‘O- okay,’ Harry hears himself saying, eyes on Zayn’s face absorbingly. ‘Do you, um. Would you like a drink or something? Some water?’ he asks uselessly, and Zayn just nods, mouth wet and sloppy as it curves into a smile again. He’s so drunk and Harry’s so gone for him and this is the worst thing in the whole world. He pulls back far enough that Zayn’s hands drop from his back, and then before he can stop himself, he laces his fingers with Zayn’s and pulls him towards the stairs, still clutching the knife in his free hand.

‘Maybe just – go up to my bedroom,’ Harry whispers, pointing as Zayn trips over the first step and slumps back against the wall laughing, head tilted back. ‘Shh, Zayn.’

‘You shush,’ says Zayn loud enough that Harry winces, grinning lasciviously. ‘You gonna put me to bed?’

Harry swallows. ‘Um. I won’t be a minute. Go all the way up, first door on the left.’

He half shoves Zayn up the stairs and, once the kitchen door is shut and the knife stowed away, allows a small moment of panic, hands flailing as he hears Zayn crash around on the staircase. He looks down at himself – gone are the jeans that he wears everyday, gone are the plaid shirts and big sweaters and flimsy t-shirts that cover the ugly stretch of skin that Zayn should never, ever see. It’s probably best for everyone that Harry find some more clothing, and soon, because this is only a recipe for absolute disaster and Harry can see it coming like a tsunami in the distance, tearing through the horizon and blurring with the sky as it approaches, flipping everything upside down.

He gazes emptily at the cooker and the framed Tomlinson family picture above it. Daisy and Phoebe were tiny, one of them tucked snugly into the crook of Louis’ elbow. His skin feels delicate when he wraps his arms around himself and presses his fingers against his back. 

Things get astronomically worse after he triple checks the front door and pads back up to his bedroom, carefully clutching a glass of water for Zayn, and finds him snuggled under the covers of his bed, duvet pulled up to his chin. Almost all of his clothing has been discarded carelessly on the floor, a trail of breadcrumbs leading to the delectable gingerbread house that is the slice of Zayn’s smooth, bony shoulder. Harry sets the water down with shaking hands and has to pinch the bridge of his nose to calm down.

‘Harry,’ Zayn says, breaking the silence. 

‘One minute.’

‘Harry,’ Zayn repeats with a pout, eyelids drooping. ‘Come to bed.’

‘Uh. Um. Okay.’ He trips over nothing as he tries to back away, one hand flat against his hip to conceal the scar. ‘Just, like… one second. Let me –’

‘No, come now,’ Zayn whines, lifting his arm up and creating a tent of the duvet. Harry blinks at him pathetically, fully aware that he’s entirely unable to resist. He buys himself some time picking up all of Zayn’s clothes and folding them carefully, steadily ignoring the heavy weight of Zayn’s gaze pressing against his shoulders.

 _Come here_ , Zayn’s saying. _Come here._

Harry swallows, readjusting his hair and hoping his dick gets the message that this is not the time or place as he slides as carefully as he can beside Zayn and lies there beside him, stiff and unmoving and corpse-like. ‘Is it okay if I stay?’ Zayn whispers, shuffling close so his head’s on Harry’s pillow, breath hot against Harry’s cheek. ‘My house is so lonely and – and cold. When you’re not there.’

‘Mmhmm,’ Harry chokes out, squeezing his eyes shut. His heart is still thundering with subsiding terror, and when he feels Zayn brush a curl away from his cheek, his cock twitches hotly. 

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yep.’

‘Sure?’

‘I’m fab. Amazing.’

Zayn breathes out a laugh. ‘Amazing.’

Harry peeks over at him and immediately finds the view so overwhelming he has to avert his gaze, staring intently at the ceiling. Zayn’s hand rests on Harry’s pillow millimetres from his face, fidgeting like he wants to touch again.

‘Harry?’

‘Yes, Zayn?’

‘I learned a new word.’

‘What is it?’

‘ _Panurgic_. Ready for anything.’ Zayn inhales shakily; Harry doesn’t reply. ‘Why’d you leave?’

‘Tired.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Niall…’ He pauses. ‘Did you and Niall have a fight?’

Harry squeezes his eyes shut tighter. ‘No.’

‘Are you cross with me?’

‘Go to sleep, Zayn.’

A long, tense silence. Harry doesn’t dare move an inch, so tense the muscles in his back start to ache.

‘Harry?’

‘Yes?’

‘You left lube out. On the side.’ 

Harry cracks an eye open and tries to overlook the fact that his heart has lodged itself in his throat. ‘Oops,’ he breathes, trying not to seem so obviously devastated.

Zayn stares at him, blinking heavily, a little breathless, and Harry squirms until he’s flipped to his front and he can press his aching cock into the mattress, screwing his eyes shut tightly and trying to remember what normal inhalation feels like.

‘I got Nicola’s number, Haz,’ Zayn mumbles. Harry thinks he might be able to get away with ignoring this, but then Zayn lightly runs his fingers against Harry’s bicep and he has to swallow a whine, grinding his hips down hard, just once.

‘Did you,’ he says flatly, voice muffled by the pillow.

‘She asked me to take her out on a date. Did you see us, Harry?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, okay.’

The next few minutes are spent in silence. Harry keeps his cheek pressed into the pillow, clinging onto it for dear life, and tries to focus on the sound of Zayn breathing, tries to match the pulverising shudder of his heartbeat to it and concentrate on not jizzing all over the mattress like some virginal teenager. Zayn keeps stroking Harry’s arm, fingers so light Harry considers that he might be imagining it, and it’s all he can do not to moan headily when he feels the mattress dip as Zayn edges closer.

‘Harry?’ he whispers, and Harry decides, rather wisely, that it would be clever and also quite necessary to pretend to be asleep, so he does. ‘Are you sleeping?’ Zayn asks, still just as quiet.

He sighs when Harry doesn’t respond, and for a moment of blissful serenity, Harry imagines that disaster has been met head on and avoided, that Zayn might leave Harry and his aching dick in peace. But then he feels Zayn’s fingers tracing the slope of his nose, and his heart stops.

His fingers are soft, like always, sliding up to brush along his closed eyelashes, smooth over his eyebrow. His stomach contracts as Zayn’s thumb catches on the line of his cheekbone, pulling down until he’s at the corner of Harry’s mouth, pressing lightly. 

He’s not breathing at all. His whole body is frozen, entirely still like any slight movement like shatter this moment in two. He can feel Zayn breathing, though, feel it warm on his face as he negotiates Harry’s mouth, trailing his fingers over it, thumbing his Cupid’s bow, before pushing very gently against the spongy surface of his bottom lip, exhaling loudly as he watches it dip.

‘Fuck,’ Zayn whispers. ‘Oh no.’

Harry feels as though the true meaning of this is probably lost in translation, clouded by the heavy pulse of his cock between his legs. It can’t mean what he hopes it does.

The bed springs groan as Zayn leans forward, presses his weight onto his elbow, and brushes his lips carefully against Harry’s cheek in a flash of heat that coils at the base of his spine and burns like a punch in his groin.

‘Night babe,’ Zayn whispers, lips against Harry’s cheek. 

Harry lies there, still as a fucking brick, wondering how he’s ever going to sleep again for the rest of his life. He waits until he hears Zayn breath deepen as he falls asleep, until he hears Niall’s door creak shut, until his heart finally slows into something manageable, bearable, until he’s able to roll to his side with his back facing Zayn so he can stare into the dark of his bedroom and think fuck.

There’s a town full of ghosts in Harry’s head and they wail out the truth, whenever he doesn’t want to hear it. 

_You’re fucked_ , they screech now, kicking their heels against his sore heart, and it’s all he can do to reach up a hand and press against the pain. _You’re fucked and it’ll kill you and this time, you don’t even love it. It’s killing you already._

And really, he can’t argue with the ghosts at all.

 

-

 

He wakes up the next morning to the sound of rain beating against the window, and white wine light spilling in through the curtains, and Zayn’s dick hard against his back.

Harry wonders what kind of hellish behaviour he exhibited in his past life to be subjected to this sort of torture, but he doesn’t want to move and he’s too selfish to not give into it a little bit. He presses his hips back, slotting himself closer, and Zayn huffs in his sleep, jerking his hips forward.

Through two layers of fabric, Harry can feel that Zayn’s so hard he’s leaking, and he has to bite at the pillow to stop himself giving into a groan. It’s the first Sunday morning in a long, long time that he’s woken up without a hangover, but his mouth is dry and stale and his head is spinning with longing and he can barely feel his stomach through the clench of lust. He lies there, hands sweat-slick and itching to touch as he revels in the feeling of Zayn’s breath on the back of his neck, the hairs on his thighs brushing against Harry’s, his heart against Harry’s back.

He hasn’t slept beside someone in so long. The last time, it was with Liam on Harry’s birthday, and he let Harry spoon him despite it being one of the many things Liam would classify as A Bit Gay because Harry half begged him, pouting and holding Liam at the waist in a tried and tested performance that always seems to work. 

The situation doesn’t improve. Zayn noses Harry’s neck, exhaling shakily as he grinds his hips forward. Harry suspects this is what it feels to be hit by a bus, and he just grits his teeth and stays still, letting the bus flatten him into the tarmac, shivering when Zayn groans wetly against his skin.

Harry lets himself indulge in it. At work, when the sheep press their soft little noses into Harry’s palm, or lie steady when he shears them, the clippers sliding over the smooth, delicate skin of their throat, and he feels a rush of something, oozing through him with the sensual, hedonistic thrill of capability. He feels that now.

There seems to be only one likely outcome and Harry prepares himself for it, palming at his own boxers as he presses back, throat dry. He wonders vaguely whether Zayn’s thinking about him, or Georgie, or Nicola, but mostly him, mostly the two of them, slick and hot and together, grinding against each other and licking at each other’s mouths, and it’s then that maybe Zayn gets too close, because he starts and kicks his leg out, gasping and flinging himself backwards so Harry hears a loud thump against the wall. He twists and scrambles to sit up, eyes wide as Zayn rubs at his head and blinks back at him, looking horrified. 

‘Are you okay?’ Harry asks, clutching at Zayn’s shoulders and scanning his face for any damage. He curves his hand around the back of Zayn’s skull, fisting his hair gently. ‘Did you hit your head?’

‘Fine,’ Zayn croaks hoarsely, one hand still in his hair. He’s flushed so red Harry imagines his face might be painfully hot to touch, but he lets his arm flop to the bed instead of curving his hand over Zayn’s cheek like he wants to. 

They stare at each other. 

‘Are you. Um. Did you sleep well?’ 

Zayn wets his lips and clears his throat. ‘Were you awake for long?’

‘Uh…’ Harry says, blinking, a bit stunned. He can’t help it when his eyes flicker down, finding Zayn’s hard cock trapped beneath his boxers. He stares at the wet patch and nearly falls off the bed.

‘Oh God,’ Zayn groans, yanking the duvet over his lap before covering his face with both hands. ‘This is so embarrassing, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t –’

‘Sorry, I’ll just – I should probably go,’ stutters Zayn, not moving. ‘I’ll go.’

‘Zayn,’ Harry says with a laugh, trying to yank Zayn’s hands from his face. ‘Stop it, it’s fine.’

‘I just – in the morning, you know. Can’t… it’s not…’

‘I get it, it’s fine,’ Harry says, grinning as he finally manages to tug Zayn’s hands away. He pokes Zayn in the nose and squirms when Zayn reaches out to poke back. He manages to get a hand under Zayn’s bicep, tickling until Zayn laughs flinchingly and bats Harry on the side, pinching until he yelps. Zayn sticks out his tongue, nose wrinkling, and Harry has to stop himself from leaning forward to lick Zayn’s tongue. 

He feels completely helpless. Zayn flops back to the bed and pulls the covers tightly over his lap, and Harry just props himself up on one elbow and blinks at him through the sheets of hair that have tangled over his face. He notices Zayn eyeing the welt of a scar that runs along Harry’s hip, and it takes a concerted effort to not squirm. Daintily, Harry pulls at the duvet to cover it up. 

He wets his lips and clears his throat. ‘So. Did you sleep well?’

‘I suppose.’ He still seems embarrassed, eyelashes dusty as he looks at Harry with an awkward kind of reluctance. ‘I don’t even remember coming here.’

‘You were quite drunk.’ 

‘God, soz. I never get drunk.’

Harry scrunches up his nose. ‘No woz,’ he says, mimicking Zayn, and Zayn laughs, teeth against his lip. ‘At least I wasn’t the mess, for once.’

‘For once.’

Harry gives him the middle finger, Zayn reaches for it, grabs it in his fist.

And then doesn’t let go.

They sit there for a long time, looking at each other. Harry’s breath is shuddering, glassy, and there’s a pillow crease against Zayn’s cheek, a patch of dried saliva against the corner of his mouth, two day’s worth of stubble weaving over his skin. He’s so full of longing, it barely even registers when Zayn lets go of his thumb and carefully, lazily, slips his fingers through Harry’s.

‘You look different in the morning,’ says Zayn, closing his eyes and selfishly allowing his mouth to form into a private little smile, frustratingly unreadable, and Harry’s brow puckers.

‘Do I?’

‘Mmm.’ There’s a generous and painful ambiguity in that, and Harry just decides to take it as a compliment. He smiles.

‘Well. Thanks.’ He licks at his lips and smiles wolfishly, squeezing Zayn’s fingers. ‘Is that why you woke up with a hard on?’

Zayn opens his eyes, looking horrified. Harry snorts out a laugh, bites at the skin of his knee to stifle it when Zayn looks ready to vomit. 

‘I really am sorry.’

‘It’s fine, Zayn.’

‘No, I – shit. I’m sorry.’ 

Harry mangles a laugh. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. Not the first straight boy to wake up next to me with a boner, you know,’ Harry says breezily, still smiling, but the promise of a matching grin slips off Zayn’s face.

‘What?’

Harry swallows. The air between them seems to deflate like a holey air mattress. ‘Just. You know. It’s a thing.’

There’s a long, awkward pause, and suddenly Zayn can’t look at him. He pulls his hand away. ‘What kind of thing?’ Zayn asks.

‘Uh.’ Harry feels strangely panicked. ‘Just, like. When I was at uni. All the guys I – I fancied were straight. Or were taken. Or – or didn’t like me.’

Zayn swallows, and Harry just sits there in his boxers and his socks, the whisper of his own erection fading. He wants to grab Zayn’s face and lick _look at me_ into his mouth, but that would be inappropriate, so instead he reaches for the glass of water and downs most of it nervously, trying to work out what to do with his face.

‘May I have a shower?’ Zayn asks, his voice different now. He bites at his thumbnail and doesn’t really look at Harry when he nods dazedly, just clambers past him and grabs for Harry’s towel hanging on the hook on the back of his door. He hovers by the doorframe, as though he might say something, but then seems to think better of it and slips out, not saying a word.

Harry collapses back onto the pillows and closes his eyes. 

Distressingly, his bed now smells like Zayn, oaky and smoky and everything nice and solid and horrible in the world, and he just burrows under the duvet and listens to the birds chirping outside and the water running and he thinks of Zayn’s hands, all smooth and long and purposeful. He imagines Zayn playing the cello and he quite nearly gets hard again, but then he drifts elsewhere, remembers Zayn’s fingers tracing the lines of his face last night.

Harry lies back on the bed with his head spinning.

He doesn’t realise he’d fallen asleep until he wakes up a long while later, the room champagne gold and glistening. The room still smells like Zayn, but he’s gone.

He heads to the bathroom to brush his teeth, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and for a long moment he stands there, staring at the shower screen.

And then he smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. 

Under the faded _Hi ZAYN_ , Zayn has written _Hi HARRY! :)_

Harry presses his fingers to it as though it might rub off in ink. Somehow, he feels ruined before he’s even been touched.


	6. (SIX) Peter Lindbergh, 1988, Supermodels

Harry sits in with the sheep for a long time on Monday morning, stroking over their flanks, pressing his palms to the bulging stomachs of the few ewes who’ll be lambing in the new year. They blink back at him with calm, trusting eyes, pressing against his touch.

As a rule, though, Harry is slow. He speaks slowly and smiles slowly and he kisses slower, making sure you really want it. He moves slow and careful, fingers soft and purposeful, like everything he touches is liable of breaking. He drifts like a breeze and he trickles like a stream and his heart beats in this same, lethargic rhythm, keeping steady pace. 

This isn’t to say he doesn’t feel; he does, profoundly so, in swathes that launch from his heart like little iron-stained nuclear missiles that keep him up at night, spreading to all the vast corners of his slow body like an atomic fall out. It’s so intense and extraordinarily too much – the horror of fear, the drowning depths of adoration, the crippling weakness of self-consciousness – that he has to force himself to believe peeling off a plaster is better than yanking it off at once. And everything happens in delay.

So Harry’s instinct has always been to exist in denial, because he knows the feeling’s coming and he hasn’t quite felt it yet. He anticipates it with the twinges of feeling in his fingertips, in his stomach, and he shrugs it off so that it has time to creep up on him, with the practised precision of an invading army. And then it shoots, and he feels it so much it strikes him into a frenzy, like a paint bomb has gone off inside his heart and dilutes his insides in streaks of red and green and black. The stain seeps out in the colour of his skin; white for shock, for panic, for fear. Pink for adoration, for embarrassment, for anger.

He has to be slow on the uptake – he needs to trust people otherwise there’s nothing left of the new person he’s become. He can’t be suspicious of everyone, and everything, forever.

Even so, pressing his knuckles against one of the ewe’s cheeks and looking into her earnest black eyes like they might convey some sort of truth, he notices that in this light, he looks almost grey. 

 

-

 

For their thirtieth date, they go in search of a funfair with Niall.

There is no sun. The sky is the colour of dirty sheets, disturbingly off-white and smeared with stain-like clouds, and Niall keeps saying it looks like snow as they trundle along in the car, the AA map limp and forgotten in Harry’s lap. 

‘None of the sheep would stand up this morning,’ Niall says, gripping the steering wheel and peering out of the windshield with the stony, suspicious look of a xenophobic old person when a black character pops up in _Midsomer Murders._ ‘It’s a sign. They always know.’

Harry bites into his apple happily, grinning when it squirts down his chin, and rolls his eyes in fond exasperation from behind his sunglasses. There’s no sun, but Harry won’t go to a funfair without sunnies – in the same way you don’t go to the theatre without a heeled shoe, or a fancy dinner without a toothpick in your pocket – and despite looking both surprised and also amused, neither Niall or Zayn have contested it. Harry swivels in his seat to smile at Zayn, mouth wet from the apple, and finds him looking awkward and embarrassed but also a bit breathless, eyes wide, mouth pink and curved upwards.

Harry’s rubbing off him on him. He’s starting to enjoy this stupid stuff, too. 

Harry swivels in his seat, looking appalled, when Niall pulls up next to a church. ‘Niall!’ he shouts, considering swearing for effect before noticing the members of the congregation filing out of the church doors just behind Niall’s anxious face. They’re all in winter coats and scarves and hats; Harry is wearing a long-sleeved Queen t-shirt and holey jeans.

‘We’re lost,’ Niall announces matter-of-factly.

‘No we’re not! We’re like, thirty seconds away.’

‘In which direction, navigator?’

Harry lifts up the map as if to demonstrate his proficiency at map reading – his thumb punches a hole in a small hamlet somewhere east of where they are. ‘Oh, come on! We’re so close!’

‘It’s going to snow, Haz.’

Zayn leans forward in his seat, stretching his elbows between the two of them. ‘Why don’t we go and ask in one of the shops?’ he suggests reasonably. His fingers find Harry’s arm and hover beside it. ‘It probably won’t snow, Niall. We might as well try?’

Harry’s heart stretches itself inside out.

Zayn pokes his tongue against his teeth and winks conspiratorially. 

They walk through the village in search of a shop. Harry insists he isn’t cold as both Zayn and Niall smother themselves in scarves, and spends five miserable minutes pretending not to shiver until Zayn quietly hands him a pair of gloves. They scoffingly pass an ice cream van and don’t stop until they stumble across a post office; Niall slaps on his disarming smile and strides inside with a loud, belly-deep laugh while Zayn and Harry play with the dog tied up outside – well, Zayn does, and Harry stands above him wondering how all his insides can inexplicably turn to jelly and he can still find enough strength to stay standing. Zayn rubs behind her ears and turns to smile up at Harry. 

‘She looks like my family’s dog,’ he says, and Harry’s struck with the almost monumental desire to know _everything_ about Zayn’s dog and family and the little world in Bradford that only belongs to him. Harry wants to hold the whole of Zayn’s world in his hand, wants to lick it, wants to rub it against his skin and see if it turns him gold.

‘What’s the Malik dog called, then?’

Zayn smiles tightly. ‘Greg. After Gregory Isaac.’ He stands, straightens his back. ‘Always felt a right twat shouting that in the park, I’ve gotta say.’

‘Home time, lads,’ Niall announces, hands in pockets as he exits the shop. For whatever reason, he’s now in possession of a newsboy cap. Harry glares at him.

‘No, Niall –’

‘It’s closed, Haz. Bad weather.’

Harry’s face falls. He licks his lips and tastes the sharpness of his apple, dried and gone stale. ‘What?’

Niall reaches for his hand, squeezes. ‘Fun fair’s shut today.’ He smiles gently in the face of Harry’s disappointment. ‘It’ll be back next year, Kit Kat.’

_Next year._

He’s fairly certain he’ll be dead in a ditch by then. And if not, Zayn certainly won’t be here. Nobody stays here long – London calls like a mother in a supermarket, reminding you that the temporary temptation of a bar of chocolate or a special offer isn’t really that special. Sugar rushes fade. Special offers end. 

Time isn’t running out – it’s sprinting, cartwheeling, speeding with the energy of an army without a backwards glance.

‘Let’s get ice cream,’ suggests Zayn, his hand on Harry’s shoulder. It slides down his arm, cups his elbow. Harry’s heart feels borrowed from someone with a lot more to hope for than he does.

Despite the arctic conditions, there’s a queue beside the ice cream van, all of the young church-goers ostensibly allowed a Sunday treat, coins clutched in small fists. One of the little girls gets shoved aside by an older boy; Zayn steadies her carefully, says, ‘Oopsie daisy, jaan.’

Harry’s fingers loop around Zayn’s wrist for no reason.

Zayn doesn’t complain.

Zayn chooses some kind of calorific monstrosity, cookie dough and chocolate and toffee and honeycomb, and Harry goes for mango ice-lolly, Niall for a 99. Zayn pays for both of them with all the spare change in the back pocket of his jeans, batting Niall’s hand away when he reaches for his wallet.

They sit on the wall snaking around the churchyard, sleeves pulled down past their cold wrists, knees knocking as they watch the seagulls swoop down to collect the debris the kids left behind, wings flapping out behind them like capes.

Harry’s still wearing Zayn’s gloves.

‘I suppose country life is nice sometimes,’ Zayn says, ice cream around his mouth. 

Niall laughs. ‘Country life. Come to Mullingar; that’s _real_ country life. Everyone’s related.’ 

‘Come to Bradford,’ Zayn says, a sly smile poking at his mouth, ‘everyone thinks we are.’

He grins at Harry and lifts one leg up so he can rest his elbow on it. He looks like he should be in a catalogue, and Harry feels like he would sacrifice the chance to look at anyone else ever again if he could just stare at Zayn like this forever. Harry squints at him through his sunglasses.

There’s something between them, something hot and sharp and crackling and gold, and he doesn’t know what it is but it’s real, it’s there, he can feel it. He can feel it pressing against his chest, forcing it tighter, making his heart beat faster, and he can feel it in the way his pulse stretches out and presses against his fingertips, the backs of his knees, the curve of his spine. 

It’s like one of those magic tricks, pulling at the tablecloth and hoping all the crockery stays put on the table. He can feel something, whatever the fuck this is, tugging at the edge of the cloth, warning him. His heart’s sat there on the table, boiling and whistling like a teapot, and one swift pull might send it crashing to the ground.

Somehow, he wants it. He wants him so much.

‘I’m sorry the fair isn’t running, Haz,’ Zayn says, wrenching Harry from his thoughts as he tongues at his ice cream in one broad, maddening stroke. It should turn Harry on, and it does, but it’s cute, too. He’s not trying to be sexy. Harry spends half his life trying to be sexy, but Zayn doesn’t really need to.

‘It’s okay,’ Harry says. ‘I don’t really like heights anyway.’

‘Neither,’ Niall adds. ‘Just in it for the candyfloss.’

Zayn nods, still smiling. ‘Just in it for the company.’

Harry smiles back, lips yellowing and wet from the ice-lolly. They look at each other, and it’s like they’re about to kiss. He reaches out and presses Zayn’s nose with his thumb, as if to say, _aw aren’t you cute_. Zayn shrinks away and then snaps his teeth, as if to bite it. 

They laugh for longer than they should, until the ice cream drips down the cone of Zayn’s ice cream and pools in the creases between his fingers. 

And it’s nothing, Harry knows that. It’s nothing. Zayn’s so fit and nice and sweet, he probably has this with everyone. It’s nothing.

But Zayn draws his hand away, licking off the ice cream, and when he pokes Harry with his spit wet fingers, grinning when Harry squirms and yelps and pokes him back, it’s something.

‘Stop!’ Harry commands, pointing a long index finger right between Zayn’s eyes. ‘This has been a shitty day and my dreams have been crushed. Let me eat my ice cream in peace.’

‘ _Sorbet.’_

‘Shut up.’

Zayn smiles, skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes. ‘No shitty days, H. Remember what you said.’ He grins and points up at the sky. ‘Keep looking up.’

It’s something.

 

-

 

‘Babe. Wake up.’ 

Harry shivers, clutching at the sheets in tight fists. His eyes are sticky, tacked shut, and he can feel the dry crust of spit around his mouth.

He’s mostly still asleep. He feels a hand on his face, soft, gentle, and he tries not to dwell on it, the potential, but he can’t.

‘Wake up.’

‘Zayn?’ he says, all throat.

‘Yeah, babe.’

He wrenches his eyes open. Zayn is lying next to him, facing him, his hair dark and fluffy against the pillow. Harry stares at him keenly, not moving, and Zayn’s fingers come to rest against his neck.

Niall drove them home last night and, almost unbelievably, Zayn joined them for Sunday dinner. ‘The more the merrier!’ Tom had bellowed in a voice that entirely suggested the opposite. The twins had force-fed Zayn more than two portions of potatoes, which Zayn had been too polite to refuse. Liam and Louis referred to Zayn as Harry’s boyfriend for the entire meal; nobody corrected them.

Important parts of Harry know he should investigate Zayn’s behaviour, but louder, more frightened parts tell him not to. 

‘Can I ask you something?’ Harry had asked last night, after Niall had retreated back to his bedroom during the credits of _Shawshank Redemption_ (Zayn was teary-eyed by the end – Harry deemed it a success).

‘You may.’ Zayn grinned at Harry sleepily, bundled up in the duvet at his side. Neither of them were sure why he was staying; neither of them wanted him to leave. 

‘Do you miss her?’

‘Georgie?’

‘Yeah.’

Zayn blinked slowly, looking a bit affronted. ‘Well, yeah. All the time. I grew up with her.’

Harry nodded into the pillow and stabbed viciously at the sheet with his toe. 

‘And I miss, like. Kissing someone. Sleeping with someone.’ Zayn paused, tongue peeking out to wet his lips. ‘Not just sex. Like, actually sleeping next to someone. I miss that.’

Harry unexpectedly ached for Zayn, then, all over his entire body, like it was begging to throw itself into Zayn’s arms. _Me too,_ Harry wanted to say, but it’s not really the same, because whenever Harry sleeps next to someone it always feels like the other person is somehow giving in. 

Except last night. Zayn wasn’t giving in last night. 

He’s got so much feeling for Zayn he feels like it might ooze out of his ears or tumble out of his mouth or dribble out of his nose.

Now, Zayn’s thumb strokes the stubble under Harry’s jaw.

‘It’s snowing, babe,’ Zayn says quietly, his voice sleep-scratched and drenched in a smile. 

‘Oh,’ Harry breathes. His nose scrunches with excitement as he watches Zayn study him. ‘Oh, wow.’

‘You want to go out? Make a snowman?’ Zayn makes a face. ‘What else did I used to do, as a kid? I’m trying to remember.’

‘Snow angels.’

‘Ah, yeah.’

‘Snowball fights.’

‘Lethal. My cousins used to put gravel in them.’

Harry grins, says slowly, ‘I’d never hurt you, Zaynie.’

His voice is so much deeper when he’s just woken up. It cracks over Zayn’s name, and Zayn closes his eyes; his eyelids shimmer like snail tracks. 

‘Shall we go outside then? Do you have a coat?’

Harry pauses, licking his lips. He reaches for Zayn’s wrist, pulls it away from his face, and traces the love line on his palm. ‘Maybe later.’

That surprises them both. Zayn squints open one eyelid, eyebrows conveying shock. ‘You sure?’

‘Mmhmm.’

What’s unsaid, but undoubtedly intelligible, like a TV voice drifting in from another room, like a phone conversation held away from your ear: _You’re enough. This is enough._

 

-

 

For a long time, Harry’s been cold. 

He pushes himself too hard and pampers himself very little. There was a time, a long time ago, that Harry used to indulge in things like facemasks and painting his nails. He used to take baths with bath bombs from Lush and let Priya, his housemate at uni, braid his hair. He used to spend hours organising his iTunes library, flirting with the Hopeless Love du jour, planning big blowouts. Even the blowouts seem alien, now – he thinks of himself doing coke aged nineteen, sweating in some club bathroom, eyes sticky and black like liquorice, and it feels like someone else’s memory. He thinks of himself in Paris, fucking anything that moved, waking up in a strange bed with hair in his mouth and laughing; it’s terrifying, horrible, so intensely surreal that he refuses to believe the clarity of his own recollection. He remembers taking pictures. That’s what he misses the most – taking pictures. 

Now he jumps at a rattle of a window, feels his heart seize when Liam so much as laughs downstairs. He wakes up in a blind panic in the middle of the night and claws at his own throat, as though expecting a hand to be there. He misses random things – his sister’s perfume, Joni’s wobbly front tooth, Jonny’s ugly tattoo he got in Kavos – and is gripped with a thick, unfiltered sense of emotion, one that pokes at his stomach in the way one might poke at something horrible and decaying with a stick.

And then it snows.

It comes down all at once, like someone’s dropped a tablecloth over the farm overnight, knee-deep and disappointingly un-soft. Harry, Niall, Tom and Zayn spend a morning securing the barn to make sure the sheep are warm, arranging blankets and pillows around the hay bales, whilst Louis and Liam conduct a cacophonous snowball fight with the twins outside.

Zayn slogs home through the snow on foot, worrying about feeding his cats; he comes back later that evening as Harry and Niall and Bess are tucked under Niall’s duvet watching _Billy Elliot._ He presses his cheek to Harry’s shoulder and nods when Harry asks if he’s okay.

It goes on, and on, and on. They finish their scrapbook and Harry helps Zayn make Christmas cards for his sisters. Zayn brings round _Khamosh_ and they watch it on Niall’s laptop. Together, the three of them make Louis a birthday cake, which started out as a spliff but morphs into a friendly radish once they realise that it may be inappropriate to present it in front of his sisters. Zayn and Harry even sneak into Louis’ bedroom/hovel/science lab to steal a jar of jam for the filling; Zayn hits Harry in the face with what is possibly a decade-stale sock, and kisses his cheek in apology when Harry shrieks, arms tight around his waist.

They go out to the beach, bundled up in scarves, sharing a flask of warm tea. ‘This is a date,’ says Harry, smiling. ‘Our fortieth.’

Zayn doesn’t say no.

Harry’s not cold anymore. 

 

-

 

Zayn strides into the bathroom without a care in the world, unfazed by the fact that Harry’s there with a towel around his waist, shaving in the mirror. 

‘Hello,’ says Harry, blinking, as Zayn props himself against the sink in front of Harry, arms crossed over his chest, and smiles at him. 

He’s still wearing his coat. His nose and ears are still pink.

‘Hello,’ says Zayn.

Harry’s fingers twitch around the razor as he runs it under the tap. ‘How were the cats?’

‘Good. I can’t tell whether they’re cross with me because they miss me, or cross because I came back.’

Harry smiles gently and presses his lips together, running the razor over his taut top lip. Zayn watches him, not moving, and the heat of his gaze has Harry’s palms sweating.

‘Missed a bit,’ Zayn mumbles reaching out and touching his fingers to Harry’s shaved cheek. Harry swallows, staring at him, and he finds that his chest hurts. 

There’s a lot, in the space between them. It’s a lot. 

‘Well,’ Zayn says, smacking his hands to his thighs and standing up straight. ‘Just wanted to say honey, I’m home.’ 

He leans forward and presses his lips to that smooth patch of skin, and even when the door clicks shut, Harry’s knees still haven’t stopped wobbling. 

 

-

 

They lie facing each other in bed, not touching. 

‘May I ask you something?’ Zayn asks, voice low and smooth over the soft brush of snow against the window. 

‘Course.’

‘How come Niall calls you Kit Kat?’

Harry draws a K into the sheet with his thumbnail, eyelashes cast down. His heart performs some sort of impressionist piece, a jarring rhythm that makes him feel woozy.

‘I had a –’ He breaks off, swallowing thickly. ‘I have a letter from my mum, which I brought with me. When Niall first came here, the first time we met, I was sat in here reading it, and it – it said Kit Kat on the envelope.’ Against the wall, a dappled pattern of snow looks like the splodges found in a microscope, zooming in on a cell. Zayn feels too close all of a sudden. ‘It was my nickname, when I was younger. Kit Kat.’

Zayn exhales slowly. ‘You do like Kit Kats.’

‘I do.’

There’s a moment, as Harry squints at the wall and Zayn says nothing, that he almost feels as though he could say it, maybe, and Zayn might not mind. There’s something equal parts terrifying and so, so beautiful about that. Then he remembers – since Zayn started staying with him, there’s been no Kit Kat wrappers. No special messages. _What does that mean?_

He doesn’t know.

Or maybe he does, and he doesn’t want to.

‘Your mum –’

‘She’s dead,’ Harry says, bluntly, self-consciously. He feels Zayn stiffen. 

‘Oh. She – oh?’

‘So’s my dad.’ Harry exploits the episode of awkwardness by shuffling closer, absorbing Zayn’s body heat. There’s something in his throat – wicked and blunt and awful, and he closes his eyes tightly, like a child playing hide and seek. ‘Do your cats miss you, Zayn?’ he asks, a kinder, more cowardly way of asking _Why are you staying with me, Zayn?_

He listens to Zayn breathing and works on convincing himself that this is all very normal. Friends sleep in the same bed all the time. People are haunted with death threats and piles of lethal, blood-soaked money all the time. People lie about having dead parents all the time – and in Harry’s case, he’s only half lying. His dad really did die, in November 1993 in a car accident, a pile up on the motorway due to black ice on the road, and his mum might as well –

He doesn’t let himself finish, kicking out a leg in a shiver, teeth clamping down on his lower lip. In the winding, cluttered, unfathomable depths of his heart, Harry knows he can’t go on like this much longer.

Two and a half years don’t just disappear – not in a new location, or a new haircut, or in a boy with a devastating mouth. Something was planted within him – something small and dark and shrivelled, something crackling and flailing and convulsing like the flames of a forest fire, and every time it’s pressed against Harry’s ribcage, reminding him it’s there, he’s sentimentalised, compartmentalised, distracted himself with anything and everything.

But he is who he is. He never knew his dad and his grandpa’s dodgy kidney might have caught up with him by now and he’s not seen his niece for so long he’s scared he wouldn’t recognise her in the street. 

He has dirt under his nails. He likes Kit Kats. He’s probably almost in love with a boy who’s essentially a stranger. He used to be able to take a nice picture, once upon a time. He looks for faces in the street that he’s too scared to name.

Harry is someone, whether he likes it or not. The ugly monster inside of him lets out a little growl of satisfaction when he reminds himself of that, preening sharply. Zayn lies there, the world turns, and there’s Harry, with a mouth full of words he’s not allowed to say and arms full of air.

‘I just didn’t want to be alone anymore,’ Zayn whispers. 

 

-

 

Harry potters into the kitchen as Zayn ducks outside for a cigarette. Morning sits as heavy in the air as the snow does against the window; Harry stretches, feels a crack creeping up each vertebrae of his back under Zayn’s red Nike hoodie, snapping the sleep out. He flicks on the kettle and yawns as he peeks under the tea towel at Louis’ radish cake – as though it might have escaped – and smiles happily to himself. The usual breakfast: eggs, toast and tea with chocolate milk. A whiney, spoiled voice he’s managed to ignore for a long time bleats that it wants a kale smoothie and eggs Florentine; Harry cracks an egg viciously against the counter and hopes it gets the message. 

He brews Zayn a cup of tea just how he likes and sets out cutlery for two. Domesticity is new to Harry. He revolted against it when he was a kid, hated normalcy because it reminded him of his mum and everything she never was, everything that could have been if he was never taken away. Attempts from his grandparents and Gemma to create what he saw as artificial family routines – family games of Scrabble, long walks via the pub, dinners around the table – seemed painfully, carefully nuanced and horrifically constructed, like a TV advert for the KFC family-sized bucket in which they all use knives and forks. He always ended up staring at that fifth chair at the head of the table, at the ghost who never bothered to fill it.

Zayn slips in from the garden, shivering with an almost tangible cloud of smoke hovering around him and settling into the folds of his jacket. He shuffles over and presses his nose into Harry’s neck, grinning when Harry squirms.

Their fingers lace together over Harry’s stomach. When he turns, Zayn’s smiling at him so gently, round eyes warm and sweet and full of something that Harry can’t bear to try and understand. Harry blinks at him, unguardedly full of veneration so unsubtle he’s sure Zayn must actually feel dazed by it. 

‘You’re colder than me,’ Zayn says, lifting up Harry’s hand to kiss his knuckles.

‘Bad circulation.’

‘I’ll warm you up.’

Harry raises his eyebrows. ‘Oooh.’

‘Behave,’ Zayn says primly, but the smile still edges at his mouth as he pulls away. ‘How are the eggs coming along?’

Harry grins, turning back to the stove. ‘On their way, obviously. We’ve still gotta beat Lilo for the best power couple on the farm.’

‘That’ll never happen. Lilo are probably downstairs shotgunning each other, naked except for tracksuit bottoms.’

‘Sounds like you’ve thought about that a lot, Zayn.’

‘Fuck off.’ He sits down at the kitchen table and props his feet up. ‘I love having a personal chef.’ 

Harry sticks his finger up at him, laughing now, and he knows quite pathetically that no matter what sticky, horrible truth lies behind all of this, he’ll only give this up when it’s pried from him with all the strength of ten thousand skies. He’s nothing if not stubborn.

‘Merry Christmas Eve Eve, lovebirds,’ Niall chimes as he waltzes in, clad in cotton pyjama bottoms and a jumper with Kim Kardashian’s face on. ‘Making eggs for me, Kit Kat? Stop it.’

Harry grumbles something unintelligible and reaches into the fridge for another egg. 

‘What time’s your train, Zayn?’ 

Zayn sighs; Harry scowls at the wall.

Zayn perfunctorily celebrates Christmas at home in Bradford because, as he puts it, ‘ _we all would have staged a fucking riot if all our mates at school got presents and we didn’t_ ’, but for various selfish reasons, Harry doesn’t want Zayn to go. Maybe, if he’s being honest, it’s because Harry hasn’t had a nice Christmas for years, and Zayn’s presence would make it infinitely, immediately better. Last year he and Niall spent the whole day in the pub, shivering because the heater was on the blink and picking their way through a disappointing carvery. 

‘Four-thirty,’ says Zayn, almost gloomily. Harry glances at him – he’s picking at a thread on his jogging pants. Behind him, on their whiteboard, Zayn’s drawn cartoon figures of Harry and Niall under LOST BOYS 2K17 and added himself, too. He and Harry are holding hands. 

Bess plods into the room just as the sound of a minor explosion downstairs – either jam- or bong-related – reverberates under the kitchen floor. She sighs long-sufferingly, shoves her face in Zayn’s crotch and blinks up at him, gaze unwavering and desperately, unapologetically sad. 

_Me too_ , thinks Harry as he burns the eggs and accidentally sticks his elbow into the butter. _Me too._

 

-

 

Zayn’s brow furrows, looking up at Harry sulkily. He’s knelt on his bedroom floor, bare feet tucked under his perfect bum, cats swarming at his side.

‘Really, Harry –’

‘I’m not exactly going to _not_ get you something,’ Harry says with a roll of his eyes, watching as Zayn thumbs at the carefully wrapped gift Harry deposited in his lap. 

‘You better not have spent any money.’

‘Or you’ll do what,’ says Harry with a small smile. He sits on the edge of Zayn’s bed, twirling the car keys around his finger. Debris of Zayn’s life is strewn across the room – underwear, stray socks, cologne, cigarettes – and Harry doesn’t even allow himself to look at the suitcase at his side. ‘Come on, it’s only an hour till your train and you haven’t even finished packing yet. Stop dawdling.’

‘All right, bossy.’ 

Zayn sighs, still frowning, but it slips when he tears away the paper and finds their scrapbook, hastily redecorated by Harry just an hour ago. He wrote their names on the front in the most painstaking calligraphy of modern history, taking immense pleasure in the ‘and’ that joined together ‘Zayn’ and ‘Harry’. 

For a long, long moment, as the pen had hovered just above the page and his tongue stayed wedged between his teeth, he’d felt the almost painful urge to write his real name instead. So it was real. 

‘Harry,’ Zayn says, blinking down at it slowly.

‘If you don’t want it, you can give it to your sisters. Or your mum.’ Harry swallows thickly and slaps on a brave face. ‘I just wanted you to have it.’

‘Thank you.’

Harry’s tongue feels fuzzy against the back of his teeth. ‘Don’t shit yourself, it’s just a scrapbook.’

Zayn’s quiet, then, and Harry doesn’t look at him. He strokes one of the cats, thumbs between her ears, and in record time he starts to panic: perhaps the scrapbook doesn’t hold the same magic to Zayn as it does to Harry, perhaps giving him a gift isn’t right, isn’t what they are. He glances at the picture of Georgie on the chest of drawers, beaming beautifully, her ringed hand splayed over Zayn’s stomach. 

Harry stands up. He tugs at his hair with one hand and fists his car keys with the other. _Remember who you are. Remember what you’re not._

Zayn reappears at Harry’s side, hands behind his back. He’s smiling with a cautiously optimistic brightness, lips thin and pulled together. 

‘Going somewhere?’

Harry nods, smiles crookedly. ‘Driving you to the station. We better go.’

‘I’ve got you something too,’ Zayn says, not moving. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to give it to you, but… well.’

Harry blinks at him. ‘I always love a present,’ he says inanely, as though his heart hasn’t suddenly resurrected out of a self-pitying coffin of dismay at the pit of his stomach.

Zayn shrugs. ‘Right, I bet you do.’ 

He doesn’t allow himself to pause further, shoving a shoddily wrapped present to Harry, tucking his empty fingers into the pockets of his jeans once Harry’s taken it. It’s heavy, pressing into the flesh of his thighs as Harry sits down with it and runs his fingers over the paper to find the cellotape, peeling it back piece by piece and ignoring Zayn’s impatient groans that he should just rip it open. He can’t, though – his fingers are almost shaking as he undresses the present like its nakedness might scare him, struck with a virginal kind of anxiety. 

He brushes the paper aside once it’s parted and he feels his stomach seize as he blinks down at it – 

An old film camera. 

A Leica M3, undoubtedly used and worn, scratches along the front and a fraying to the strap, but still – still indescribably perfect. He weighs it in his palms and tries to ignore the storm in his throat, whipping up to the backs of his eyes.

Harry looks up at Zayn and finds him staring back, his lip tucked between his teeth. 

‘It was mine,’ Zayn explains. He sounds almost embarrassed, but Harry can sense the pride underneath it – the glory of getting it right. ‘Thought I was proper arty when I was at uni. You should see my drawings – I think I drew a dog’s vagina, once. Some of them were all right, I guess, but I think too much weed is potentially to blame.’ He smiles carefully. ‘But I thought… you wanted to be a photographer, didn’t you? Probably about time you started again.’

Harry swallows, glancing back at that picture of Georgie because he doesn’t know where else to look. There were whole parts of his life he’d written off, vast futures the size of whole towns that he’d sunk with atomic bombs in the shape of resignation. He’s already finished. He can never be a whole person again.

Zayn knows him, though, knows things about Harry – about Kit – that he can’t understand yet. 

And he still has hope for something else. Something beyond this. 

Harry looks away from Georgie, back to Zayn whose hopeful expression is faltering, now, fingers itching against his lap like he wants to snatch the camera back. Harry reaches for his hand.

‘Thank you,’ he says in an unattractive kind of croak, meaning it. Zayn smiles. 

Harry drives him to the station with the windows down. It’s hideously cold and the wind tangles with Harry’s hair, whipping it into his mouth, but the air manages to taste like sharp salt and watery snow all at once, and it stings in the best way, crisp and sharp and dry against Harry’s eyes and the corners of his mouth. Zayn tucks his face into his scarf and fidgets at Harry’s side, knee bouncing under the weight of his bag, eyes scrunching at the corners so Harry can’t tell from glancing at him in the rearview mirror whether he’s smiling or wincing. 

They pass the cliff that Harry used to drag Niall to, the one he wants to jump off. He says as much to Zayn, nodding at it passively.

‘You’re insane,’ says Zayn.

‘I know.’

‘That’s so dangerous.’

‘That’s the point.’

He tugs at Harry’s wrist, fingers closing around the boniest, skinniest slip of skin, digging his nails in until Harry can feel the half-moon crescents branding him.

‘Harry. You don’t need to do stupid shit like that.’ 

Harry doesn’t reply. 

The car winds through the countryside, past crumbling barns and lonely pubs and sagging, sad looking trees, bending under the weight of the snow as though suffering under a heavy white fur coat. Zayn lets go of Harry’s wrist to shield his eyes from the sun, face cast ashen in the light reflecting off the snow, a black-handprint shadow slapped over his face like a bruise.

At the station, Zayn sits there for a long time, staring out of the windshield, his tongue pressed to his cheek. A sign declaring Lower Brockley Station flaps in the breeze, wheezes on its hinges. A small, jolly Christmas tree sits inside the threshold of the station, lights blinking their hello. 

‘Wish Niall and I had got a Christmas tree,’ Harry says. His voice sounds unbearably loud. ‘I get the feeling we’re not exactly meant to share the Tomlinson’s one.’

Zayn doesn’t reply. He looks dazed, unblinking, his fingers white around the strap of his bag.

‘My granny used to let Gem and I decorate the tree so nicely,’ Harry goes on, almost unthinkingly. ‘We used to put on every colour tinsel. Even blue. Even pink. Some of Gem’s friends used to take the piss, say it was tacky. But Granny let us do whatever we wanted.’ He swipes his thumb under his nose, scratches at the corner of his mouth. ‘Grandpa made the star for the top himself. And my mum painted her initials onto it when she was six.’ Zayn’s jaw jumps, but he doesn’t move. ‘Gemma’s first boyfriend snapped the star by accident. I cried for two days.’

Zayn glances over at him. He looks torn, mouth wobbling, and Harry feels vaguely cataclysmic – his stomach churns with the weight of goodbye, and he taps at the steering wheel with morbid kind of glee, hyper-aware of the silence.

‘Well, have a good Christmas, then,’ Harry says, baring his teeth in a smile and squeezing his own thighs. ‘Should probably get back to – to Niall, and Bess –’

‘Harry,’ Zayn says, so quiet it slips off Harry’s panic like a soap bubble.

Harry swallows, his throat unfathomably dry. ‘You’ll miss your train, Zayn, you should –’

‘Harry.’

‘I – I honestly, it’s going to get dark, I can’t –’

Zayn reaches for him, hand on his arm, his shoulder, the nape of his neck, and then fisting in his hair as he pulls Harry in, pressing Harry’s face into the crook of his neck. Harry can’t help it; he inhales Zayn so forcefully he can almost feel the heave of it in his lungs, the jagged edges of his heart cutting against the swell of his ribcage. He twitches as though to move away, the gearstick pressing against his stomach, the seatbelt cutting into his shoulder, and Zayn just holds him tighter.

‘You need to be safe,’ Zayn murmurs.

‘I will. I promise.’

‘You swear?’

Harry laughs breathily into Zayn’s shoulder. ‘Promise,’ he says. ‘Keep looking up. Remember?’ 

Zayn lets him go. They blink at each other, exhaling through chapped mouths into the stagnant air between them, and Zayn’s gaze feels almost reluctant as it holds his. 

‘I –’ He breaks off, coughs unexpectedly. His knee jumps again under his bag. ‘I’ll be back in January.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m not leaving you, Haz.’

Harry tries to process this, pressing down hard on his knees to focus through the drum of his heartbeat. ‘Yes,’ he says, thinking _No_. He’ll be going to London in January; he doesn’t imagine it’s very likely he’ll come back.

‘I think … I’ve been, um. I’ve been thinking,’ says Zayn, chewing on his lip. He tears a piece of skin with his teeth, and Harry watches blood bloom red in the spot. ‘Would you want to maybe… maybe come to Bradford? For New Year’s Eve?’

Harry stares at him, breathing slowly, and then frowns. ‘What?’

‘We could go out,’ Zayn says, stiffening perceptibly. ‘It’ll be – it’ll be fun.’

Harry scratches audibly at his jeans; the car is suddenly too hot, too cold, Zayn’s gaze too heavy and too light and so close and so far and too much and not ever, not nearly, not even slightly close to what he wants. 

‘I can’t,’ he croaks. ‘I can’t, it’s so – so busy, Zayn, I can’t –’ 

‘I’ll look after you,’ Zayn promises, reaching for him even though there’s nothing to grab for; Harry jumps and his elbow collides with the door. ‘I promise, Haz, I promise.’ He squeezes Harry’s shoulder tightly, leaning into him, and his eyes are earnestly steady, no humour whatsoever in his tone. ‘Please come,’ he says, bottom lip devastatingly wet as it falls and leaves his mouth gaping and pleading, tauntingly pink. ‘Please. For me. I think we… I think maybe we have things to talk about.’

For a long moment, Harry doesn’t react. He feels so full – full of longing, of lust, of fear and panic and secrets, of unresolved tension, of unspoken feelings, but in there somewhere, he feels the tell of happiness, and it’s not yellow like he thought it’d be: it’s blue.

Blue like the sky, like the sea, like the plastic bag Zayn held the first time they met. It’s clear and uncomplicated, light and dark and strong and calming, and as he nods at Zayn, once and then again, this time not stopping, just nodding and nodding and nodding, Zayn’s face relaxes into a blue smile, eager at the corners and sloppy in the middle. Blue because Zayn wants him to come, blue because they have things to talk about, blue because the world just stretched like elastic, became bigger and wider and deeper and Harry’s about to step into it, break the surface like toeing bath water. Like tearing a hole in the sky.

‘I’ll book a train,’ says Harry, spine prickling.

‘Yes. Yes, do.’

‘I’ll have to check it’s okay for me to take time off work.’

‘I’m – I’m sure they won’t mind.’

‘And make sure Niall feeds Bess properly. And your cats.’

‘Yes. Yeah, please.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay.’ Zayn licks his broken lips and nods again, fingers easing off his bag. ‘I’ll see you then.’

Harry nods. ‘I’ll see you.’

Zayn fixes the strap on his shoulder, fiddles with his scarf, and then leans forward to plant a dry kiss on Harry’s cheek. For what feels like a whole lifetime, he hovers there, breath hot against Harry’s cheekbone, hair scratchy against Harry’s temple, before he pulls away. ‘See you,’ he says again.

He trudges across the empty carpark through the snow. Like the first time Harry saw him, the city radiates off him like he’s got his own ozone layer, an impermeable force field that seems to neglect interaction with snow or mud or people like Harry. 

Except he turns once he’s reached the Christmas tree, lifting a hand in a wave. 

And then he points up at the sky. 

‘Head up,’ he mouths, grinning, and Harry finds that he’s smiling back, even when Zayn’s turned and moved away, even when he’s gone so far, the smudge of his shadow melts away.

 

-

 

The sign outside the fish and chip shop is bleeding ink. Almost all of the houses have twinkling Christmas trees in their jolly front windows, like picturesque little postcards. His favourite shop – painstakingly organic, serves pâté and homemade conserves and small cheese hampers and everything he can’t afford – is boarded shut for the night, with such unnecessary vigour it looks as though it’s preparing for an air raid.

This is home, now. He knows every corner. He smells of sheep all year round. He knows things about animal birth control he never ever needed to. 

There’s no real reason why he rings Seb. It just sort of happens on autopilot. He sits on the wall by the harbour where he first saw Zayn, that night he was coming back from Max’s. The cold soaks through the worn-out bum of his jeans but he just shivers through it and blinks at the horizon distractedly. 

‘Hell-o?’ Seb chimes, annoyingly chipper as always.

‘Hi, it’s –’ He casts a surreptitious eye around. ‘It’s Kit Watson.’

There’s an extended pause as Seb almost audibly sits up straighter. ‘Kit! Mate! How are you?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Harry says, adjusting his items and trying a laugh. ‘Look at you, working on Christmas Eve Eve.’

‘Witness protection never sleeps,’ Seb jokes, which isn’t at all funny. Harry doesn’t laugh. ‘Everything okay?’

‘I thought…’ Harry starts, then trails off with a gulp. 

‘Go on,’ Seb prompts, and then, in a softer tone, ‘Kit you know this number is only for emergencies.’

‘I know,’ Harry says haughtily. He tucks his free hand into the crease under his knee, wedging it between calf and thigh. ‘I just wanted to ask you a question.’

‘Right. What is it?’

‘If – if I suspected that there was someone who might be a…’ He closes his eyes. ‘Maybe working for UKPPS. Or the police. Could you find out for me?’

Seb is silent for what feels like an age. ‘What?’

‘It’s not a big deal,’ Harry says quickly, fingers stuttering over the phone. ‘I just got a vibe off someone the other day.’

‘A _vibe_?’

‘Yeah. A vibe.’

‘A vibe.’

‘And it could be me just being paranoid, but I thought I’d ask.’

‘What kind of vibe?’

‘Just a vibe.’

‘You’re going to need to tell –’ 

‘Just – weird!’ Harry says, exasperated. Not for the first time, he finds himself irritated by Seb and his bureaucracy, his formulaic ineptitude. ‘They just looked at me funny.’

‘They _looked_ at you funny? Did you have something in your teeth?’ 

Harry grits his teeth, closes his eyes against the wind. ‘There’s a guy, okay?’

‘Kit –’ 

‘His name’s Zayn Malik.’ 

‘Are you asking me to look through the yellow pages –?\

‘Can you take this seriously,’ Harry snaps. ‘Remember what Dan said?’

Seb sighs. ‘With all due respect, Kit, it’s my job to remember what Dan said. Every single day. Your safety is our every priority.’ Harry opens his eyes tiredly. For a second, the world blurs in smudges of white and blue and grey, before he focuses and everything falls into place. ‘The gang division have tabs on everyone, mate. They have inside sources, spies, who know that scene back to front, and they tell us _anything ___that relates to you.’

‘Yeah, I know but –’

‘One thing about you and we’re getting you out, that’s what we do. We’re keeping you safe. We know what we’re doing.’ Harry’s heard this all before. He presses his tongue against his cheek and stares at his shoes. ‘You’re asking if somebody in Catterlock is working for the UK Protected Persons Service?’

It sounds ridiculous when Seb says it like that. With such condescension. Harry scowls. ‘Well. Yes, I guess.’

‘If we had stationed someone there to look after you, it wouldn’t be protocol for me to –’ 

‘Protocol? Come on, mate.’

‘I have hoops to jump through, Kit, I’m not at liberty –’

‘Yeah, well I don’t! I’m not a fucking dog! This isn’t – this isn’t Crufts!’

Harry takes a moment to mentally pat himself on the back at his own joke. Seb’s teeth snap at the end of the line. ‘I’m aware of that, Kit.’

‘I’m asking you,’ Harry says, pinching the bridge of his nose, ‘because I’m a person, Seb. I’m not just a protected witness. I’m – I’m real. I’m alive. So please tell me. Please.’ He pauses, chews the inside of his mouth. If he could see himself now, he knows exactly how he’d look – tired. Bleary eyed, slack mouthed, and tired. ‘Is there someone here who should know who I am?’

The sound of Seb chewing gum is audible through the receiver. ‘No,’ he says carefully. ‘We’ve not stationed anyone down there.’

Harry’s heart crackles like tin foil. ‘What about the police? Could they –’

‘No.’

‘There’s no-one –’

‘There’s no-one. Unless they’ve seen your file, they don’t know. Nobody sees your file, Kit. Nobody sees your file.’

‘So – so there’s nobody here who should know who I am?’

‘No, Kit. Nobody there knows who you are.’


	7. (SEVEN) Arthur Elgort, 1995, Stella Diving

Here’s a story:

Once upon a time, Harry had an iPhone.

It was Gemma’s old one and the top left hand corner was cracked after an incident with vodka and a bathroom floor. He used to cut his finger on it, sometimes, when he’d fish it out of his pocket.

Mostly he loved the camera. His camera roll was full of the standard stuff everyone else had – screenshots of the group chat, pictures of a nice sunset, blurry drunk selfies, illicit, faintly artsy snaps of his dick. Sometimes he used to sit up late at night, face illuminated by the screen, duvet tucked under his chin, and scroll through them all, right back to that very first shot of Joni on Christmas Day, dancing in her Peppa Pig pyjamas. 

There were a lot of pictures he was proud of, though. The running joke was that he was surgically attached to his camera at uni, cradling it with an almost umbilical bond, but there were rare occasions the iPhone was all he had to hand. So there are some pictures – a girl at a bus stop waiting in the rain, a face caught through the ghostly book gaps in the library, a flatmate, half-dressed, slouched on the sofa. A naked thigh against ruffled sheets, a pile of clothes on the floor, a strand of foreign hair on his pillow. Light against his bedroom wall, dappled against the bluetac stains and pictures of his mates from home and Gemma and Joni and Meg the cat. The wires for his professional lighting, trailing across the floor like liquorice. The ash off a spliff, burning a hole in his jeans.

He’s lost those now. He doesn’t, won’t, can’t own an iPhone. He doesn’t, won’t, can’t pick up a camera. He doesn’t, won’t, can’t be anyone he wanted to be, because the future he used to chase doesn’t belong to him anymore. He doesn’t, won’t, can’t, won’t, can’t, won’t, won’t –

The end. 

 

-

 

Harry stares at the wall. 

His heart feels too sweet, too soft, too much, like a donut with all the jam seeping out. His blood’s being poisoned saccharine by it. He’s on some horrible sugar comedown, Zayn suddenly stripped out of his bloodstream with the stinging sharpness of wax, and he doesn’t know when his hands will stop shaking.

He remembers his first day in Manchester. His grandpa dropped him off in the car, and Harry was embarrassed moving into halls as everyone else’s young, good-looking, capable parents helped haul their stuff into their new rooms. He mumbled one word answers and looked sulkily at his feet, and primly insisted they didn’t need help from one of the stewards, sweating through his new t-shirt as he stomped back and forth from the car with his things. Grandpa kissed his damp forehead as a goodbye, said, ‘ _Be safe, then, Kit Kat_ ,’ and closed the door without looking back. 

Maybe he was too hurt. At the time, Harry didn’t even care; he was so swept up in the city, the long busy streets and the horns and the heavy drag of smoke in the air, the planes overhead, the queues in supermarkets, the restless, itching urgency. His flat were nice, if not a bit bland. One girl was fit (Harry slept with her three days in, after watching _Notting Hill_ in her room before predrinks; he classed it in hindsight as a gargantuan miscalculation of judgment), two of the boys were very fit (he sucked off one of them when he broke up with his girlfriend at the end of first semester before Christmas – a mistake – and the other in the summer of second year after a house party. That was also a mistake; they never spoke again). Mostly, he was astounded that none of them knew each other, and yet everyone somehow knew how to dress, knew what music was cool, knew what the good nights out were, knew that it was socially perilous to not smoke roll ups and to have somehow avoided a gap year in south east Asia. They knew which cab companies to ring and which chippy was best and who was already eyeing up who. Harry was clueless. 

By the end of fresher’s week, Harry chopped his hair short, bought new trainers, started listening to Alt-J and Tame Impala and Mac Demarco, took up smoking, and slept with four people. He’d only ever really slept with three before – he says really, because one other awkward adolescent rendezvous definitely didn’t count as technically clothing wasn’t removed, and another he was too drunk to strictly remember. He beat his own record – the one he’d been accumulating since his sixteenth birthday – in a week.

He was inordinately proud of himself. At uni, he was _hot_. 

Now, he can’t even remember any of them distinctly. They seem to all blend into one.

He just remembers his grandpa struggling up the stairs, and not looking back when he closed the door.

Maybe he was too hurt. 

‘Harry,’ Niall whispers. ‘Are you awake?’

Harry hums in reply. They’re lying side by side in Niall’s cold bed, the duvet pulled up to their ears. 

He’s slept in Niall’s bed with him since Zayn left, but the house itself is starting to scare Harry, all the dark untouched corners and shaky window-frames and whispers of old truths Harry can’t bear to hear, so he’s forced Niall to let Bess stay with them, too, and coerced the pair of them to stay up as late as possible. They watched old _Bake Off_ episodes on Niall’s laptop until their eyes hurt and ate about a thousand white-chocolate-coated cranberries. 

Harry can feel one under the duvet, pressing against his knee. He wonders idly whether he’s burning up hot enough to melt the chocolate.

‘What’s the matter?’ Harry murmurs, eyes wide and glassy.

‘I’m scared,’ Niall says, swallowing over it.

Harry shifts against the mattress. ‘Of what?’

‘Of people not liking me.’ He exhales slowly and Harry’s heart bends like plastic. ‘It’s a week today. The screentest.’

‘I know.’ Harry pauses carefully, pulling at his bottom lip with his teeth. ‘My mum used to tell me that fear is only as strong as you allow it to be. I think that whole _fear makes you stronger_ thing is bullshit. Fear is fucking terrifying. If you indulge in fear – that’s when it gets to you. You have to shut it away.’

‘I just – I don’t know.’ Niall’s breath shudders loudly, his voice catching. ‘I wish I wasn’t … I wish I was normal.’

The air feels thick and heavy and it presses against Harry’s shoulders so hard he trembles.

‘Don’t say that,’ Harry says pleadingly, reaching for Niall’s hand under the duvet and squeezing it. 

‘It’s just not _fair_. It’s so unfair, Harry. I don’t want to have to lie.’

Harry blinks hard. ‘Then don’t.’ The growl of the wind presses against the windows, the slap of the shore audible in the distance. Harry’s heart jabs against his ribs so hard it hurts. ‘Your family might have been shit to you, but that doesn’t mean the whole world will be. You can’t be scared of who you are.’

Niall exhales shakily. ‘But what if –’ 

‘You have a chance,’ Harry whispers, squeezing his hand so hard he can feel Niall’s bones. ‘You have a chance to be heard and be seen and it’s amazing. It’s amazing.’ He smiles at Niall through the darkness and feels a torrent of affection for him, so sudden and violent he has half a mind to fly to Ireland and punch all of Mullingar in the face. ‘You have more love in you and for you than some people will ever have. Ever. So fuck anyone if they think it’s the wrong kind of love. Fuck them.’

They lie there and Niall doesn’t say a word. Harry takes a breath, slow and careful, and marvels in the way the sound ruptures the silent room like something’s been torn.

‘I wish I was brave like you,’ whispers Niall.

That nearly kills Harry. He takes another measured breath. ‘I’m not, Niall. I’m not brave at all.’

He pulls Niall close, holding him and hugging him so tightly with his palms against his back that he feels Niall struggling to breathe. _What if my name isn’t Harry?_ he almost whispers. _What if it’s all been a lie?_

He’s reminded of the pictures on the flip phone, all taken by Niall. He breathes in Niall’s hair and ignores the question that pulls against his chest like elastic, waiting for the stinging _snap!_ of release.

‘I love you so much,’ Harry says instead, his eyes shut tight. ‘You’re my best friend in the whole world. I love everything about you. I hope you know that.’

‘I love you too,’ Niall says quietly as he pulls back to break them apart. He turns his head on the pillow and smiles toothily at Harry, who stares back at him through tangles of hair, eyes glinting. ‘And if Zayn doesn’t shag you into the next century soon, I’m gonna have to do something dangerous involving a tractor.’

Harry squawks out a laugh, shaking his head. ‘Thanks, Al Capone.’

There’s silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of the sea in the distance and the hum of the light on in the corridor. The rest of the world might be still and sleeping around them, but when Niall kisses the tips of his fingers and touches them gently to Harry’s eyebrow, their small corner of it glows gold in the nothingness and feels warm against Harry’s heart. ‘Stay sweet, Kit Kat,’ he says, and Harry smiles, and the gold doesn’t fade.

 

-

 

Harry once said that he can’t listen to classical music when he’s travelling because it makes him feel like he’s about to die.

He said as much to Gemma, when she was driving Harry back to university in his last year and insisted they tune into Classic FM. She glared at him, nodding to Joni in the back. ‘Don’t say things like that, you idiot,’ she hissed, as though the small toddler with apple juice crusting in her hair might be able to understand Harry’s joke. 

Still, she let him change the radio station. They listened to Michael Jackson instead.

On the train to Bradford on December 30th, Harry listens to classical music the whole way, namely ‘The Light She Brings’ by Joep Beving, which was Gemma’s favourite despite admitting that it does sound a lot like funeral music. 

The way Harry sees it – if he’s marching in front of his own firing squad, he might as well be dramatic about it. 

 

-

 

Bradford is busy. The station is right in the middle of town, unspectacular and grey and horrifically full, various loud noises blasting like small explosions from every direction. Harry clutches his bag to his side, shivering in his wax green coat and beanie, feeling distinctly out of place. Someone barges past him, shouting ‘ _Sorry mate!_ ’ over their shoulder, and Harry flinches violently, shrinking in on himself.

Everywhere he turns, he sees a face he doesn’t know. Thousands of eyes, none of them focussed on him, hundreds of gash like mouths, yapping, shouting, white teeth glinting, and he doesn’t even dare to blink. A lady in a beautiful headscarf, moss green and embroidered with blossom flowers, is blinking at him worriedly from where she’s stood over by the Burger King sign, but even looking at her is freaking him out – he feels like his eyeballs are trembling as he takes a stumbling step forward and nearly upends a pram with his muddy, oversized trainer. 

‘Sorry,’ he croaks, stepping backwards and crashing into an old couple who gasp at him loudly; the man starts speaking to him in an another language, the woman tutting under her breath, and all of a sudden, Harry’s rucksack feels like it might snap his back, his palms are sweating so much they slip against his coat as he tries to pat himself down, his teeth feel sharp and lethal in his own mouth, his breath comes out short, thin, he spins on the spot, eyes like saucers, and it feels like everyone’s absurdly far away, like looking through a backwards telescope –

‘Harry?’ Zayn’s voice says, holding his elbow. Harry turns, panic spurting all over the insides of his stomach like a dropped carton of milk. ‘Hey! You’re here!’

He smiles dazzlingly, that lazy, wide smile that seems so unduly honest. Harry blinks at him helplessly, clutching Zayn’s hoodie between his fists. 

‘I – I need –’ Harry splutters, not blinking, not looking away.

‘I know,’ says Zayn, pulling Harry into his side and pressing his hand to Harry’s lower back. The touch burns through Harry’s coat, through his sweater, through the shirt underneath. ‘Let’s go home.’

 

-

 

Zayn’s family live on a kind of street that Harry’s only really ever seen on television, only felt suggestions of in the rougher ends of Manchester, down black-hole roads which were labelled as no-go’s for students. He feels ungainly and awkward, especially as the kids playing with their bikes on the street turn to blink at him, tilting their chins, laughter dribbling away in favour of curiosity. 

‘Zayn! Kafi weqt se ap ko dekha nehin,’ one of them says to Zayn – a boy, teenaged and buzz-cutted, jaw sharp. Zayn smiles, mumbles ‘Salaam bhaiya’. His fingers brush against Harry’s. ‘Aap kaon hain?’ the boy asks, nodding to Harry. He stares at him unabashedly, the beginnings of facial hair blooming like fluff on his chin.

Harry blinks at him stupidly. He tries a small smile – one of the girls behind him laughs.

‘Mujhe jaana hai,’ Zayn says, holding out his fist. ‘Phir milaiyin ge.’ 

It’s bumped by the boy, and then all the other kids, even a little girl with an oversized denim jacket and a messy pair of pigtails. Zayn pulls one, grinning at her fondly, and then he presses his fingers into Harry’s back as he steers them down the road; the crowd behind them collapse into a fit of giggles, not stopping when Harry peers at them over his shoulder. 

‘Don’t ask,’ murmurs Zayn, so Harry doesn’t.

Inside, Zayn’s house is as overwhelming as the station. Light spills from every corner – in fact, Harry doesn’t think he’s ever been in such a bright house, lights on in every room, fairylights and open windows and small lamps and ceiling spotlights with sharp, unforgiving vividness, such a stark contrast from the gloomy confines of his attic with Niall. He hears music and chattering and the television and another layer of music, and the coat rack by the door is vomiting outerwear onto the floor, spewing on top of a disorderly pile of shoes of every size and shape. He can smell spice and flowers and hormones and a lingering waft of damp, and he’s only just managing to toe his dirty trainers off when a dog bounds from nowhere and leaps up, seemingly to tear off Harry’s face.

‘Calm down, Greg, you dickhead,’ Zayn snaps, batting him away impatiently. Greg settles for headbutting Harry’s kneecap. ‘You look terrified,’ Zayn says, elbowing Harry with a teasing smile.

‘Not at all,’ Harry says with a gulp, trying to look everywhere at once. 

Pictures hang lopsidedly on the walls. A huge, peeling map of Pakistan, the colour of tea, lines the staircase. Out of nowhere, a jumper flies down the stairs like a bird, threatens to hit Zayn in the face until Harry reaches out to catch it with a deft hand, balling it into his fist in front of Zayn’s face.

Shrieking echoes from upstairs, distinctly female, distinctly teenage. 

‘Oi!’ Zayn yells. ‘Wali, don’t throw things!’ He grins at Harry. ‘Nice catch.’

‘Shut up!’ she shouts back. ‘Safaa did it!’

‘Nooooo, Zayn –’ There’s a loud sob. ‘Wali, stop! That’s mine!’

‘Why can’t you share, what is wrong with you! Don’t –’

Zayn sighs and rubs a hand over his face. ‘Well. Be right back.’ He smiles tiredly at Harry and reaches for the jumper and Harry’s rucksack, slinging it over his shoulder as he stomps up the stairs. 

Harry’s left alone. 

He stands a little awkwardly, turning on his ankles so his toes press together against the carpet. Greg’s quickly bored of him and clambers up the stairs after Zayn; without a present witness, Harry thinks he’s allowed to peer closer at the pictures on the walls, fiddling with the strand of hair that’s intent on disobeying him and curling against his cheek. He smiles at a picture of tiny, toddler Zayn, curled up against his mum’s legs at the beach, a scowl crumpling his face like an unironed party dress.

A torrent of something unnamed and awful brews in his chest, whistling like a kettle, an oncoming freight train. He listens closer and finds it’s whispering _Zayn, Zayn, Zayn_ , in an exploitive and bolshie voice, demanding to be heard over the stubborn sound of him swallowing his spit, over the tyrannical kick of his heart. 

‘Zayn jaan, kyaa kar ra–’ 

He stops, blinks at Harry, who’s blinking back at him with the preoccupied, confused look of somebody who’s been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

‘Ah,’ says Zayn’s father – Harry assumes so, anyway – and wipes his hands on the teatowel he’s tucked into the front of his jeans like a pinny. He’s tall, almost unbelievably broad, a bulge of muscle under his jumper which lets Harry know he could very easily be knocked out. Harry stares at him.

‘Uh,’ says Harry, looking over his shoulder for no reason whatsoever. ‘I’m, um –’ 

‘Harry,’ Zayn’s dad answers for him, smiling broadly. He claps two big, dustbin lid hands together and takes a step towards him. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you, I’m Yaser.’

Harry nods and hums at a bizarre pitch, extending a hand; Yaser scoffs at it and pulls Harry into a hug, patting him gently on the back before holding him at arm’s length. ‘I hope you like a barbecue?’

‘Oh, yes, I like anything really, I’m not fussy,’ Harry says, words stumbling, eyes wide and eager to please. Yaser chuckles.

‘Well, good. We’ve got a big spread on, everyone’s coming.’

‘Everyone?’

He assumes the look that used to make his friends' mums fancy him when he was at school – a disarmingly vacant, ambiguously hopeful megawatt smile. Yaser grins in a way that suggests _you have no idea_ and steers Harry into the kitchen.

The afternoon passes in the way Harry should have expected it to: in a dim haze of confusion. It transpires that Zayn has a big family, but not the Big Families of television, snide and exclusive and rife with gossip and long-felt tensions. Or perhaps it is there and Harry can’t tell; he hovers tentatively in the kitchen, scrambling to do anything to help whilst Zayn’s mum – Tricia, very Zayn-like, heartbreakingly lovely – smiles at him fondly and clears up all the mess he makes attempting to marinade chicken. Zayn’s sisters take a flattering, almost predatory interest in him, baring their teeth and fiddling with their hair whilst asking vaguely intimate questions about Harry’s life goals and previous achievements. 

He feels like he’s in some sort of job interview, a simulation of an afternoon, that he didn’t read the guidebook for. He raises a weak eyebrow when another aunty or cousin waves at him, smiling widely, but he gets the feeling they know something he doesn’t.

Zayn calls him over as Harry’s up to his elbows in a salad, beckoning him with his beer. Harry washes his hands slowly, drying them on the tea towel Yaser wore earlier, and slips through the crowd to find Zayn. 

A queasy kind of light is dripping through the windows of the living room and only seems to be touching upon Zayn, as though it wouldn’t dare to go anywhere else. Harry smiles at him, fingers brushing his elbow.

‘Wanted to introduce you to everyone,’ says Zayn with a subdued smile. ‘Didn’t get you up here to be a maid, you know.’

Harry shuffles on the balls of his feet to distract himself from the energy in his fingertips, the desire to reach out and pull Zayn closer. 

‘I don’t mind.’

Zayn rolls his eyes in a way that Harry hopes is fond.

Everyone turns out to be a raft of Zayn’s cousins, all of them younger. They beam at Harry, springing over to hug him, smacking kisses to his cheeks, but Harry’s attention is drawn painfully and quite awkwardly to the corner; namely, to the boy in the wheelchair, blinking at him with serene blankness, spit crystallising his chin.

‘This is Qais,’ Zayn says with a smile – Harry just knows because of the sound of his voice, not because he looks over. He gulps and smiles nervously, glancing at Zayn, but suddenly his hands feel a bit too big and his feet too wide, not helped by the fact that all of the cousins are staring at him. He feels like in another family, this kind of thing would take place under the masked surveillance of intermittent glances, but he’s starting to realise the Maliks are too straightforward for stuffiness, the kind that unabashedly tell strangers they have spinach in their teeth with a kind smile and a hand raised to demonstrate.

‘Hello,’ says Harry, feeling stupid. He lifts his hand to wave and then feels awkward so lets it drop. He reaches for one of the little baby cousins sitting on the floor and hauls her up to bounce her on his hip, just to have something to do with his hands. 

‘He would say hello back,’ says one of the cousins – Sarooha, Harry thinks – at his elbow. Harry expects her to say something else; she doesn’t. 

Zayn sits on the arm of the chair besides Qais, reaching for his limp hand. Despite the glazed, absent look on his face, the over-long stubble on his face, Qais is clearly gorgeous – or was, a while ago. He has Zayn’s bone structure, Zayn’s wide eyes, but his mouth is drooping at the corner and his face seems oddly creased, like a sock in the back of a drawer. 

Zayn lifts Qais’ hand for him and waves it at Harry gently; Qais laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners, and the cousins laugh too, and Harry finds himself chuckling, arms wrapped around the baby tightly, the sound crackling against his eardrums. Zayn catches his eye and holds it, still smiling, and he only looks away when he turns to kiss Qais on the temple and wipe at his chin with the hem of his t-shirt. 

Harry has a small and fleeting cardiac arrest, a seizing of the muscles in his chest, a blooming of something hot and prickly that seems to slide right between the folds of his heart, that threatens to never go away. 

 

-

 

Harry hovers in the corner, confused, as Zayn's entire family gather around the wet looking fireworks in the garden and sip root beer. Harry is still astonished that anyone in the world actually enjoys drinking root beer. To make matters worse, he is holding one – ' _would you like a root beer, Harry?' 'Oh, definitely, my favourite, thank you!'_ – and one of Zayn’s little cousins is eyeing him with suspicion, her face half shadowed in the amber glow of the light leaking from the living room, so he can't subtly tip it into the rose bush as planned.

He and Zayn got back from the boxing club they went to last night with Danny and Ant at 2 in the morning and slept till 11 – the first time Harry’s slept past 8 since he was at university. The painfully now-familiar weight of Zayn next to him in the bed, the smell of him soaking into the pillows beside him – it was like waking up to a punch in the face, a deep squelching of his blood as it seemed to kick-start like his chest. They made brunch in Zayn’s kitchen, eggs and toast like usual, and for a while it was so solidly normal, so achingly lovely, that Harry thought things might be the same as they were back in Catterlock. Zayn held the back of Harry’s neck as he buttered the toast, thumb rubbing over the nub at the top of Harry’s spine, and he played with the curly ends of Harry’s hair while Harry was washing up. They showered and got dressed and set off into Bradford, and Zayn didn’t tell him off when he suggested it was a date.

‘Where’s your fave place in Bradford then?’

Zayn puffed on his cigarette, a grim sort of look on his face. ‘Don’t have any.’

Harry took a moment to let that sink in. ‘What do you – what?’

Zayn shrugged and looked at his feet. They were walking – where to, Harry couldn’t be sure, but walking all the same, down long grey streets intermittently troubled by cars, under a long grey sky decidedly untroubled by the sun. ‘I just don’t.’

‘But there’s got to be –’

‘There isn’t. Nowhere you’d like.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do.’

‘But you –’

‘Harry,’ Zayn said sharply, sighing with such impatience that Harry could only stare at him. ‘Stop it. Okay?’

‘Stop what?’

‘Just stop! Stop – stop trying to make this –’ He waved his cigarette ‘– into something!’

‘I don’t understand,’ Harry said after a long moment of silence. He was looking at Zayn with the kind of intensity that demands to be faced, like a car crash on the other side of the motorway, but Zayn didn’t glance at him once.

‘There’s nothing … glamorous or – or fucking _exotic_ about Bradford. All right?’ Zayn viciously tried to suck life out of the end of his cigarette, but there was nothing left of it; he threw it into the road. ‘It’s shit. It’s fucking shit here. You can’t find any of your stupid _beauty_ in this shithole. So leave it.’ 

Harry lowered his voice, reached for Zayn’s wrist. ‘But you always talk about it. You always say you love it –’

‘Because it’s mine!’ Zayn snatched his hand away. It tore a new hole through Harry’s chest. ‘I love it because it’s mine. It’s got nothing to do with you.’

Harry swallowed. Zayn wouldn’t turn, didn’t turn, but he nodded anyway, tongue pressed against his cheek. 

‘I just – you don’t care. Not really,’ Zayn went on. ‘It’s not – not anywhere you’re used to, or would like. It doesn’t mean anything to you like it does to me. So don’t try and force it to.’

He almost said ‘ _I want to love it because it’s yours. That’s why I’m here._ ’ But it didn’t feel worth it anymore. 

They ended up walking to nowhere, in silence, until Zayn led them home.

He tips his root beer into the bush.

‘You look awkward,’ someone murmurs at his side; he flinches, planting a hand against his chest in fright. Waliyha is at his side, blinking at him with catlike eyes, vaguely unimpressed. ‘Did you and Zayn have a tiff?’

A lump appears in Harry’s throat. ‘Sorry?’ he says.

Waliyha looks at him frankly. ‘I can tell. He didn’t laugh once when watching _She’s The Man_.’

Harry’s unsure what to say. He blinks at her, smile starting to feel rusty, and then looks away. ‘Oh, right,’ he tries to say casually, although it fails rather spectacularly. He doesn’t want Waliyha to think badly of him, so with some superhuman effort he stems the small tantrum threatening in the jut of his lower lip and stands there, still and calm, like the grown man he is, limbs feeling odd and misshapen and awkward, and wishes he still had some root beer so as to drown the acid curling over his tongue. 

‘Harry,’ Waliyha says with a hint of exasperation. She reaches with a small hand and plucks the can of root beer from Harry’s clenched fist. ‘Do you want me to help you?’

Harry pretends to ignore this for an excruciating few seconds, sniffing and scrubbing a hand through his hair, until curiosity and desperation gets the better of him and he sneaks a glance at her from the corner of his eye. ‘Help me? Have I got something in my teeth?’

It’s a bit of a rubbish joke but he chuckles anyway, just to make it clear that it’s meant to be funny. Waliyha’s face doesn’t move.

‘You don’t have much time before you’ll be going over to Danny’s, I expect,’ she says with an encouraging raise of her eyebrows. ‘Clock’s ticking.’

‘I know,’ Harry says, working towards another joke. ‘There’s a countdown on the telly and everything. Big night tonight.’

She rolls her eyes and slips her fingers through his. ‘Come on.’

Waliyha half drags him through the garden, tossing the empty can near-ish the bin once they’re in the kitchen; Harry pulls away to retrieve it, making sure it’s safely stowed in the bin before allowing her to tug him upstairs. If she notices the tremor in his fingers, the slickness of his palm against hers, she doesn’t say a word.

Neither of them say a single thing, in fact, until the door to her bedroom is slotted shut and Harry is stood in the frightening rubble of Girl Things, an Amazonian teenaged jungle of stuff. He shifts and treads on a tube of something. 

‘Shit, sorry, just stood on your –’ He picks it up and has absolutely no idea what it is.

‘Highlighter,’ she says, snatching it from him, pointing at the bed wordlessly. Harry sits on the very corner of the mattress and as far away as possible from the mountain of stuffed animals that all seem to flaccidly glare at him. 

‘Nice room.’ Harry says, smiling helplessly. He points at the wall. ‘Who’s that?’

Waliyha glances at the poster and then back at Harry with a raised eyebrow that suggests distrust. ‘Shawn Mendes.’

‘Who?’

She snorts. ‘Oh dear.’

‘He’s fit.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Who’s that beside him?’

‘Rami Malek? No? What’s wrong with you!’

‘Sorry.’

Waliyha smiles, shaking her head

‘Not been in a girl’s bedroom in a long time,’ Harry points out.

‘Ew,’ is all Waliyha says, nose scrunched. 

‘Totally innocent,’ Harry defends, gingerly leaning back against a particularly large panda and crossing his ankles. 

‘Again – ew.’ Wailyha emerges from the wardrobe with an alarming armful of clothes, looks at Harry critically, and drops them all on the floor. ‘Ah, crap. Don’t know what I was thinking, these will be too small for you.’

Harry imagines it’s idiotic to be offended – she’s seventeen. ‘Hang on – what?’

She ignores him, striding from the room and then reappearing just as Harry gets to his feet. ‘Don’t move!’ she says, pointing at him, and shuts the door firmly. Harry sits back down, stares intently at the wall. 

It’s suddenly too quiet. Harry looks at his hands – too big, too bony, hardened at the fingertips. Not like Zayn’s hands – not like _Georgie’s_ hands, he expects. 

He doesn’t often allow himself to think about Georgie – more specifically, about Zayn _with_ Georgie – but when he does, it’s all too easy. Zayn’s sweet and tactile and gentle, listens carefully and laughs freely. It’s not hard at all to imagine him as someone’s boyfriend, holding their hand as they queue for the bus, absently playing with their hair as they curl up and watch a film. It’s more than easy to imagine Zayn, lazy and sleepy and clingy, in bed on a Sunday morning, naked and giggling and reaching, reaching out, pulling her back to him. 

It’s easy because Harry spends large amounts of time imagining himself as the other body. And then his brain reminds him that Zayn wouldn’t want Harry’s flat, hard skin, wouldn’t know what to do with the throbbing ache between his legs, might be repulsed by the things Harry likes, and it hurts so much he has to close his eyes.

‘Try this,’ Waliyha says, striding back into the room and throwing a shirt into Harry’s lap. He looks down at it, suddenly feeling strange and on the verge of an emotional assault. 

‘Waliyha. I – I think you may have got the wrong end of the stick, here.’

She blinks at him critically. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Zayn and I –’ He coughs to disguise the crack in his voice, the edge of pain. ‘It’s not – I know I might be, you know, into guys. I suppose that may be obvious. But we’re not –’

‘It’s just a shirt, Harry,’ Waliyha says, smiling at him devilishly. ‘Who said anything about _you and Zayn_?’

Harry stares at her dumbly. ‘Um.’

‘The shirt’s Doniya’s – she won’t mind. I found you a pair of Zed’s jeans as well, they’ll probably be a tight fit but that’s, like, what I’m going for, so –’

‘I don’t want him to fancy me just because I put some nicer clothes on,’ Harry thinks, apparently out loud and with a palpable air of panic, because Waliyha’s face melts. There’s a stiff, almost brutal silence, before she clambers over various crumpled garments and scary looking make-up utensils to sit beside him on the bed. 

‘Harry, it’s not meant to be about that.’ She pats his knee reassuringly. ‘I want you to feel confident.’

Harry’s heart sags, heavy like he’s just smoked a hundred cigarettes and scaled a flight of stairs. ‘Oh,’ he says, because there isn’t much else, eyelashes dipping as he thumbs at the rip in his worn out jeans, tugging at where they wilt at the knee. 

‘Zayn says you work so hard,’ she goes on, gentle now. ‘He says you don’t feel like you’re, like, worth anything more than the farm. I just thought you might want to feel special for tonight.’

Harry’s breath seizes.

Zayn knows that. He saw that.

Waliyha’s smiling knowingly when he looks up at her, shirt bunched in his hand. It’s black and silky and he knows he’ll look nice in it without trying it on – that’s not entirely the point. Still, he smiles back, at first tentatively and then hopefully, and he sees something in her – a flicker of a secret, the one that’s appeared like a camera flash in most of Zayn’s family this weekend, flashing like the subliminal messages Harry’s read are apparently woven into the Beatles’ songs. He blinks at her, trying to find it, understand it, but she only holds his gaze for a second longer before looking away.

She bounces to her feet. ‘Try those on,’ she demands, hair swishing behind her. ‘I’ll be back in a minute to fix your hair. I’ll do some eyeliner too.’

Harry’s beyond arguing. ‘All right.’

Out in the garden, very distantly, he hears Zayn’s voice. He’s speaking in Urdu, laughing at something, but even so Harry can’t help but peak through the blinds in hope of finding him, the chink he creates with his fingers casting a tiny patch of yellow light against the grass. 

‘Harry?’ Waliyha says, making him jump.

‘Yeah?’

She hovers by the open door, hand resting against the doorknob, and for the first time, she looks young. Really young – as anticipative and energetic and blind as every seventeen year old, and Harry notices the concealer she hasn’t rubbed in properly on her chin, and the lines of ink she hasn’t quite managed to scrub off her hand from doodling on herself, and the awkward tilt to her mouth when she looks at him, as though unsure of her own smile.

‘Do you think he’s – he’s, like. Proper into boys?’

Harry swallows helplessly. ‘Oh. I – I don’t know.’ He swipes his tongue over his mouth, watching as she tucks her hands into her sleeves. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

She scoffs. ‘Course not.’ There’s a moment, as she holds the door handle and Harry holds the shirt, where she smiles hopefully and his heart aches quite magnificently, before she says, ‘I think he really needs to be loved by someone like you.’

 

-

 

It all happens so fast.

He spends the whole of predrinks basking in the knowledge that he looks nice. The tousled hair flopping over his forehead, the smudge of kohl under his eyes, the pleasing lines of his nose, his highlighted cheekbones, the sharp edge of his jaw –

He looks nice. He bites his lip, tugging it with his teeth, and the thrill – climbing onto roofs, jumping off cliffs – is back. The power is back. 

Midnight strikes. Harry doesn’t see who Zayn kisses – he’s too busy slobbering deliberately over Jawaad’s cheek for a laugh, clinging onto him even though Jawaad’s batting him away.

He feels truly impermeable as they stagger to the bus stop. He tucks his arm around someone’s waist and lets the farmer jokes slide off him like butter, like rain; he doesn’t even flinch when he’s jostled on the bus. He’s all wide, jittery smiles and rain-damp curls in his eyes, and every time Zayn takes a step towards him, he pulls back because _this_ feeling – invincibility, in all its hedonistic glory – is what he’s meant to be giving to Zayn. Not the fleeting, ambiguously comforting feeling of the two of them together that Harry can almost see fizzling out, like the sharp sulphur end of a sparkler, dying in your palm. He can’t bear it. He can’t watch himself fizzle out, not with Zayn. Not like he has with everyone else. 

Not with Zayn.

So he steps away. 

The club is huge and packed and achingly, swelteringly hot. Harry feels the residual anxiety rear up when they first gather inside, the clamour, the sweat, the thousands of eyes that in turn roll and widen and blink and unfocus. 

So Harry drinks until his eyes cross and the panic dribbles away. 

It all happens so fast. 

He trips off to dance, gets squashed between a million bodies, and he actually likes it – he dips his head, rolls his hips, feels like he’s twenty again. The DJ’s playing dancehall, Gyptian and Vybz Cartel and Elephant Man, and when Murder She Wrote comes on to rapturous cheers, Harry grins at nothing, imagining Zayn’s face lighting up. He feels a line of sweat inch down his temple and he tilts his head back, face towards the pulsating lights like he’s praying, mouth open, eyes shut.

He thinks only of Zayn. Zayn dancing – properly dancing, grinding against someone, pressing his body against theirs; it’s a lot, almost too much, because Zayn presses too close anyway, sits crowded up against Harry, touches his clothes, his hair, the hard skin of his hands. He can’t imagine how it feels to have him that close, _actually_ touching rather than skimming, _actually_ watching, rapt, rather than aborted glances and horribly unexplained stares. 

His heart shudders, now, as he turns and scans the crowd for Zayn.

_You promised you’d look after me. Where are you? ___

Harry makes use of his broad farmer shoulders and shoves people out of the way carelessly, emerging from the dancefloor with a gasp, like he’s been underwater. The thin shirt feels damp under his armpits, around his waist, and he stumbles, looking desperately for Zayn, until a hand halts him, curling around his bicep.

It’s not Zayn – it’s a girl. Rhiannon, she says, and Harry starts with a bad Fleetwood Mac impersonation which she tries and fails to find funny. She’s small, has long dark hair and red lipstick grazing her mouth, and Harry finds he’s following her through the bacchanal crowd, down a long ominous corridor and into a bathroom. It’s been a long time since he went anywhere with a stranger, and he pushes the disaster sequence flickering to life in his head back to the gloomy depths it came from. He vaguely wonders if they’re about to have sex, but then she stops, perches on the sink, and flaps a little bag of white at him. 

It all happens so fast.

He finds Zayn stood in the corner with the harsh spotlight of his phone pulling on the shadows of his nose and his bottom lip. Harry crashes into him, grinning manically, and Zayn’s expression glides between alarm and relief and anger in the space of about three seconds.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Zayn snaps, trying to wriggle away when Harry clamps his arms around his waist. 

‘Hi, Zaynie.’

‘I’ve been so worried, why did you run off?’ 

Harry doesn’t stop smiling. He presses his nose against Zayn’s cheek, kisses his jaw delicately. ‘I made a friend, baby.’

Zayn shudders. ‘Don’t call me baby,’ he mumbles.

Harry’s heart feels so deep – deeper than he ever thought it could feel, and it’s terrifying that he wants Zayn to see all of it, to reach right down to the murky depths of it and pull all the stringy, sad bits of him out and hold them to the light. He wants Zayn to see all of him. It only makes him cling to him harder, pressed all along Zayn’s side. 

‘Have you been having fun?’ Harry asks, mouth ghosting Zayn’s cheek. 

Zayn sighs. ‘Harry,’ he says, trying to push him away. ‘What have you taken?’ 

‘I’ve had so much fun,’ Harry replies, ignoring him. He presses his fingers hard into Zayn’s back, as though trying to mark him, and eventually he feels Zayn’s arms snake around his waist. Imagine being the girl he won’t hesitate to hold one day. It breaks Harry’s heart. ‘Thank you,’ he breathes.

‘For what?’ Zayn asks, but he angles closer, his breath short and stained with whiskey that feels sharp against Harry’s mouth.

Harry doesn’t reply. He inches forward, spit jumping in his throat, and feels his composure crumble when Zayn’s gaze slides to his mouth. He smirks in a wobbly sort of way, dipping his hand so that his fingers graze the waistband of Zayn’s jeans. ‘I want to leave now, though.’

‘Yeah?’ Zayn says, licking his lips. ‘Okay, hang on –’

‘With my friend. Rhiannon.’ He pulls back, keeps a firm grip on Zayn’s back with one hand as he gestures to Rhiannon with the other. She’s watching them, eyebrows raised quizzically. Zayn’s arms drop like dead weights. 

Harry grins at her and then at Zayn; he’s looking at Harry like he’s just announced the world is going to end. 

‘The three of us,’ Harry says unsteadily, rubbing at his wet mouth with the back of his palm and finding it smudged with red, like blood. He feels like he’s just been kicked in the stomach eighty times at the look of intense misunderstanding on Zayn’s face, like the flush of his cheeks is now pulsing in scarlet flashes just below his ribcage. 

Zayn doesn’t want Harry to know Bradford. Zayn doesn’t want Harry. Zayn wouldn’t want Kit. But he’ll want her. He wants this – to feel something, to be young and fucked up and have fun. He wants to feel someone loose and pliant and open in his arms, wants to feel like he matters again. He wants to know that he’s worth something. So it’s simple.

Harry knows all that, because that’s how he’s felt for so long, until now. Until Zayn.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s not about him. 

It doesn’t matter that when it hurts, this time Harry doesn’t like it. He hates it. 

For once, he wants to be everything. He wants to feel like he’s enough. 

‘The three of us,’ he says again, hooking a finger under Zayn’s collar. He smiles dirtily, licks his lips, and Zayn’s gaze dips to trace his tongue. ‘What do you think?’

Zayn doesn’t say a word. Maybe Harry should say it – _I’m in love with you_ – but nobody’s ever believed him before. Maybe that’s because it’s never been true before, or maybe it’s because nobody really wants to be loved by Harry. He’s forgettable, dispensable, a nice mouth you knew a long time ago, a mop of hair that, for a while, was hung on your every word. Maybe Harry should say it, but then what difference would it make?

His days are numbered, anyway. There’s nothing to catch him, now, if he lets himself fall.

He presses on Zayn’s collarbone with his thumb, silently says, _Please. Just please let me have this._

‘Okay,’ says Zayn. 

It all happens so fast.


	8. (EIGHT) Juergen Teller, 1998, Young Pink Kate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some warnings for this one! Scroll to the end notes if you need them :~)

The room Zayn manages to book for them is small, mostly occupied by the mid-sized bed, a little desk and chair slotted into the corner. The curtains are long, scraping the floor, and silhouette the tall buildings outside; Zayn goes to stand beside them, staring like some overdramatic superhero and as though he can somehow see through the fabric to the city below.

Harry and Rhiannon hover awkwardly behind him – there’s no guidebook on how to initiate a threesome, particularly when one of your party is so glaringly unhelpful. Harry deposits the keys and his wallet and the little bag of coke on the desk, swallowing at the unpleasant feeling in his throat as he watches the way the fabric of Zayn’s jumper pinches over his broad shoulders when he lifts a hand to touch the curtain. His face is soft in profile, such easy simple lines, as though he could just be any normal person and not _this_ person, Harry’s person, and Harry finds that he’s almost terrified by the prospect of being able to touch him. It’s so visceral – the want and the fear and the astounding clarity of both, seeing as it’s within touching distance – that it actually makes his heart ache, so instead he turns to Rhiannon, reaching for the back of her neck and kissing her with more passion than she probably expected. 

It sounds obscene in the almost silent room, slick and filthy over the buzz of the heating and the distant sound of traffic. Harry holds her close by her neck, fisting at her hair, but his other hand skims down her body, over her bum and the soft crease of her thigh. She smells so comfortingly girlish, clean and soft like perfume and bodywash, and her mouth tastes like lipstick, and her hand is small when it reaches to cup Harry through his jeans. He groans into her mouth, pushing her against the wall and collapsing against her, chest heaving.

Rhiannon breaks away from him, breathing hotly into his ear. ‘Are you going to join in, Zayn?’

‘You guys seem like you’ve got it sorted,’ Zayn says, weirdly stilted. Harry looks over his shoulder – Zayn is standing there by the window, the bed between them like a barricade, his arms limp at his sides. He meets Harry’s gaze, and for one scorching moment, lust squeezes Harry’s stomach like a dishcloth, dripping down to his thighs with the heat and speed of candle wax. All at once, his jeans are uncomfortable, and Rhiannon seems a little unnecessary, but then Zayn looks away and the heat snaps like a bungee cord and snakes into anger. He turns and bites Rhiannon’s bottom lip, pulling her close by her hips, and makes a show of moaning as he kisses her wetly, curling his tongue. 

_Be jealous_ , some ugly part of Harry hisses as he pulls Rhiannon to the bed. It matches his heartbeat, the ragged pull of his breath. _Fucking care about me._

It’s only when Harry’s on his way to hard and he and Rhiannon are mostly naked, grinding against each other and panting, that Harry starts to panic. It dawns on him slowly at first, then speeds up, like the blurred whirl of the washing machine when he’s bleary eyed in the kitchen making tea; it gets louder, rattles, the sound of buttons and zippers colliding, hitting against the door, the soap stinging in his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

Zayn won’t come over, hasn’t so much as touched either of them, and maybe Harry, who hasn’t spared a thought for safety or propriety or the sanctity of this kind of stuff in such a long time, is guilty of not considering the worries of a person like Zayn. A normal, happy person. Rhiannon makes a breathy little sound beneath him, clutching at Harry’s hair, and Harry’s reminded that Zayn’s only ever slept with one person before. He’s hardly going to want an audience, another guy, in close quarters when he finally allows himself to move on, is he? He’s hardly going to want _Harry_ here.

His head swims under an Atlantic pool of sudden regret.

Rhiannon excuses herself to go to the toilet, perhaps noticing the abruptly reluctant pull of Harry’s mouth against hers, and Harry lies there for a moment blinking at the ceiling, barely even daring to breathe, before he moves to sit on the edge of the bed in his boxers, hair mussed, mouth swollen. 

Zayn – sat in the desk chair – doesn’t look at him.

They listen to the hum of the cheap lightbulb above them. Harry starts fiddling with his hair, still hardly breathing at all because he feels like the sound would be deafening. Zayn doesn’t move.

‘Do you want me to go?’ asks Harry quietly.

He doesn’t reply. 

‘I can if you want? Like – if you want it to be just you and her. I don’t mind.’

Zayn says nothing.

Harry gives a breathy laugh to disguise the terror that’s managed to lodge itself in his windpipe. He stands up and looks at Zayn for a long moment before he decides to deal with the coke, cutting it right there against the cheap wood of the desk. He ignores the way his fingers shake.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Zayn.

‘Want a line?’ Harry says, laughing again. He fishes for that same tenner from earlier in his wallet and rolls it back up tightly. 

He hears Zayn swallow. ‘I don’t know if we should be doing this, Haz,’ says Zayn, and Harry really laughs this time, dipping his head to the table.

‘Bit fucking late,’ he points out. 

The head rush is more calming than it is dizzying, a fizzing at the centre of his forehead as he straightens up and tilts his head back, blinking hard. The light flickers above him, pulsing like the vein he can see in his wrist as he calmly unrolls the note and rolls it back on itself to straighten it out. 

The queen stares back at him, judgmental and anxiety-inducing as always. He flicks her nose with his finger and laughs.

‘You used to do this a lot?’ Zayn asks.

‘What, a threeway or coke?’ Harry says, giggling at the perversity of it. A week ago, he’d almost forgotten that this part of himself existed – _exists_ ¬– beneath the mud and sheep shit. Zayn doesn’t answer, so Harry replies for both, ‘Not a lot. Not my first time.’

He can feel Zayn watching him, the heavy weight of his gaze on the scar on Harry’s hip. Harry considers asking again whether he’d prefer if he left, but he’s certain something awful might happen if he does, like never speaking to Zayn again, so instead he licks his fingers and swipes them through the residue of coke on the table before closing the space between him and Zayn.

‘Want it?’ he asks, not moving. He lifts his hand.

Zayn’s got the exasperated and scared look of somebody who has no idea what they want. ‘Harry –’

‘Stand up,’ instructs Harry bluntly, doing his best not to look surprised when Zayn does as he’s told. They stand facing each other, expressions equally unreadable, except Harry’s only in his boxers and is quite obviously half-hard, and Zayn’s stood there fully clothed, blinking at him. ‘You’re being rude.’

Zayn tilts his chin. There’s a wolfish, challenging look about him that makes Harry’s jaw clench. ‘You looked like you had it covered,’ he says, trying and failing to veil irritation.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Work it out.’

‘You’re being stupid.’ Harry can feel the coke going to his cock and he shifts on the balls of his feet, licking his lips. His insides are teeming with a sense of excitement, of impending disaster, and he grips Zayn’s chin when he turns his head, pulling him back. ‘Tell me what you want, Zayn. Do you want me to go?’

Zayn bats his hand away. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he says sulkily.

‘You’re acting like a child,’ Harry points out.

‘What? No I’m not.’

‘Yes you are.’

Zayn glares at him. ‘Shut up.’

He looks so good angry; Harry feels the creep of the telltale wetness across the fabric of his boxers, feels his cock twitch hotly. He shoves Zayn’s shoulder, probably harder than he would have done sober. ‘I asked you a question. Do you want me to leave?’

‘No, Harry –’

‘You could have said if you didn’t want me here.’

‘I thought – I wasn’t –’

‘You seemed up for it, now you chicken out.’

‘Fuck off. It’s not like that.’

‘Then _what?_ What do you want?’

Zayn lifts a hand to his hair, looking around as though someone else might answer for him. When he looks back, his eyes end up on Harry’s scar again. ‘How did you get –’

‘Tell me!’ Harry snaps in a wild burst of confidence, ignoring him entirely. The two or three inches between them in height have never felt so apparent. ‘What do you want?’

Zayn swallows. ‘Don’t be so cross with me,’ he says, quiet with a suddenness that makes all of Harry’s muscles tense at once, like he’s just thrown himself into an ice bath. He blinks at Zayn, astonished, but Zayn isn’t meeting his gaze anymore.

He stretches out his free hand and thumbs gently at the line of scar on Harry’s hip, tracing the curve of it. His fingers creep around the fleshy part of Harry’s waist that peeks over the top of his boxers, and Harry’s heart feels like it vibrates, like it’s suffering some kind of allergic reaction, as he watches Zayn look at him. Touch him. 

‘Zayn,’ he breathes, almost begging, and when Zayn looks up at him, gone is the heavy-lidded smirk, the brazen sexual confidence that allowed him to sit in the corner while Harry got off with a beautiful random girl and not even bother to watch. His eyes are huge, soft, tracing Harry’s agonised expression, and when he reaches out, for one moment of violent distress Harry thinks he might touch his face. Instead, he reaches for Harry’s hand with both of his, holding his wrist with one as he delicately dusts off the coke with the other. His thumb circles the bone in Harry’s wrist softly, and Harry feels sick, light-headed, horribly hot and hard and clumsily heavy, too big and wide and sharp and stiff for Zayn, and then Zayn laces his fingers through Harry’s, squeezing gently, and looks up at him.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he says, his lips barely moving at all, and there’s a moment of awfully intimate silence between them, the air saturated with it, before Harry says, ‘Neither do I.’

Zayn shakes his head. ‘You do, you’ve – you’ve done this before –’ 

‘Not with you,’ Harry breathes, reaching for Zayn’s waist with his free hand, sliding it under his shirt. His skin is too warm, and the thought that his blood might feel as sickeningly hot under his skin as Harry’s does has his stomach clenching. It’s almost sacrilegious to touch him. 

‘I – I haven’t… with anyone else before,’ Zayn mumbles, his breath catching when Harry leans forward and presses his nose to Zayn’s jaw, breathing shakily against his neck. Even that touch has his heart flaring, a sound pouring out of him that’s somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. 

‘Don’t be scared.’ He brushes a kiss to Zayn’s neck, feels his pulse flutter under his skin. ‘She’s gorgeous. She’s perfect. Like you.’

Zayn chokes. ‘I – I’m not scared.’

‘You can – you two can – I’ll go –’ 

Zayn presses his hand to Harry’s bare back, holding him. ‘Harry, please.’

‘Please what?’

He squeezes Harry’s fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ he breathes, agonised. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

Harry presses a kiss once more to Zayn’s neck before pulling back. Face to face, Harry’s few inches on Zayn actually matter, just enough that Zayn tilts up his chin. They’re so close he could count the freckles on Zayn’s nose, so close he could lick Zayn’s eyelashes. Like the first time they met, he looks vast and uncomplicated and open and smooth. The tallest sky, wide and bright and huge, deep enough to fall right into.

Harry kisses him slowly, trapping his bottom lip between his own. Zayn seems vaguely surprised, exhaling a strangled kind of gasp, and Harry has to squeeze his eyes shut, unreasonably terrified he might be pushed away. 

Harry pulls back to let Zayn take a breath, rubbing at his waist with his thumb. Zayn licks his lips, eyes still shut, and before Harry can move – torn between pulling away or pressing in again – Zayn leans forward, pressing their lips together with a little sound that Harry dedicates to memory and will replay every day for the rest of his sorry life, his ears ringing with it. He nips at Harry’s bottom lip, grips his hip so hard it makes Harry wince, and then he groans, prising Harry’s mouth open eagerly with his own.

Zayn’s desperate, hot, biting at Harry’s lips, their teeth clacking together, and there’s a clumsy stumbling sound as he tugs Harry closer and Harry’s foot collides with the desk, but both of them pretend not to notice. Nothing really registers besides the wet flat of Zayn’s tongue, the way he keeps pulling and pulling at Harry like there’s a fraction of room left between them for Harry to draw closer. Harry presses Zayn back until he’s sandwiched against the wall, groaning and trying to anchor himself with one palm flat against the dirty wallpaper and the other in Zayn’s hair, and everything is blurring dangerously, his skin roaring, his heart beating so hard it bruises.

He’s breathing in Zayn like he’s been starved of air, gasping and panting against Zayn’s tongue, burning with it, pressing him closer and closer until there’s not a single inch of cold space between them. He traps Zayn’s lower lip between his own, heart fizzing like the volcanoes he made in school with vinegar and bicarb of soda when Zayn moans disbelievingly. ‘This is,’ Zayn says, as Harry pulls back and sponges frantic kisses to the corner of Zayn’s mouth, his Cupid’s bow, his nose, and he never finishes his sentence. Harry tries not to go completely insane when Zayn exhales an aching sort of noise, yanking at Harry’s hair and tilting his head back, and all Harry can think about is fucking him, being fucked by him, how rough and hard and soft and sweet and devastating it would be, how Harry would be his –

‘Starting without me?’ a voice says, and they both jump, foreheads knocking together. He’d entirely forgotten about Rhiannon, and now he looks over at her, at the soft skin bulging in her nice bra, at the hair between her legs and the pink colour in her cheeks, bloomed at the sight of them kissing, and he bitterly wishes she’d somehow managed to trap herself in the bathroom. Harry feels Zayn’s breath against his cheek – he hasn’t even turned to look at her. 

Harry takes a huge step back. 

‘Um,’ he says stupidly, running a hand through his hair. ‘You took ages.’

‘I thought he might need warming up,’ she says, smiling kindly at Zayn who’s still staring at Harry. Harry flashes him a tight, painful smile of encouragement, ignoring the frenzy of his heartbeat.

And then he turns away. 

He’s faced with himself, his horrified, black-eyed expression in the dirty mirror, and reminds himself with punishing sternness that this is what Zayn needs. He wants to learn to live, wants to be young, wants to get over his ex-fiancée. He wants to have a funny gay experience with his little farmer friend, a night out on the town that ended weirdly, a story he can tell his future wife during pillow talk. 

He tells himself that over and over again, matching the rhythm with the rabid pulse of his heartbeat, because it’s everything he is, now, and everything he does every day; convincing himself of the truth, even when it feels an awful lot more like a lie.

Still, he hears the soft sound of them kissing and he has to close his eyes, shuddering in disgust. This isn’t what threesomes are meant to feel like, he’s pretty sure. He’s not meant to want to cry when they haven’t even started yet.

He wastes time – does a few dabs and picks his and Rhiannon’s discarded clothes up off the floor, folding them carefully, and stares at himself in the mirror, the vibrating edges of his face, the dirty purple of the circles under his eyes. 

But after that he has to look over, his hands in fists. 

Zayn’s shirtless now and he sees a glittery flash of saliva as they kiss, and it’s shockingly tender, nothing like the way he kissed Harry at all. He dips his head to press kisses down her stomach, all the way to the space between her legs, and he looks up at her and asks, ‘You okay, babe?’ with the confidence of someone who’s done this a million times.

Harry feels sick. 

He has no idea how to get back into it, to feel anything but jealousy as she grips his hair and grinds her hips up. It’s a feeling he hasn’t had since he was a kid, a gross envy that makes him want to stamp his foot and scream, and he just stands there in a haze of snivelling bolshiness, watching the muscles in Zayn’s back, until Rhiannon reaches out an arm for him, smiling dazedly.

‘Come on, Harry,’ she says.

He crosses to the bed and kneels beside them, kissing her hard, going heavy on the tongue so he feels her spit slick over his chin. ‘How do you want it?’ he breathes into her mouth, smoothing back her hair, because this isn’t a movie with seamless transitions: they’ll have to negotiate some positioning, and Harry thinks it’s best that the negotiations don’t involve Zayn.

‘Take this off,’ is all she says, thumbing at his boxers, and he does so without preamble. He’s mostly lost his hard-on, too preoccupied with the intense fit of jealousy that hasn’t entirely gone away, but he holds his hand out for her to lick and reaches for himself, pressing his face to her neck as he pumps his fist. 

For a long moment, all he can hear is his roaring heartbeat, and then the other noises filter in; the familiar slick sound of skin on skin, the pull of Zayn’s mouth, the three of them breathing. His breath stutters when she pulls his hair, grinding helplessly into his hand, and his eyes flutter open without permission, turning his cheek to rest against her collarbone, to find Zayn.

He finds him. The boy he loves, hovering between her legs, wet mouth hanging open vacantly. Watching him.

‘Zayn’s still got his jeans on,’ Harry says, snitching like they’re in primary school. Rhiannon laughs, and Zayn swallows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he clambers up to peel his jeans off. Harry sits back on his knees – just to give Rhiannon more of a show – and spits loudly into his hand. He smiles when she kisses the outside of his thigh. 

‘Nice cock,’ she compliments.

Harry smiles. ‘Thanks.’

‘Mine’s not that big,’ Zayn says, sounding stiff.

‘It’s not a competition,’ says Rhiannon.

‘I’m cut.’

Rhiannon laughs again. ‘That’s fine,’ she assures, with the patience of a schoolteacher. It makes Harry huff out a laugh, too, at the perversity, until Rhiannon grips both his thighs and nudges his hand away, pressing her tongue to the underside of his cock.

‘Jesus,’ Harry hisses, the muscles in his stomach jumping, and from the other side of the bed, Zayn coughs over a sound Harry doesn’t hear. Harry swallows, tilts his head back, and tries so hard not to think about Zayn, which has the effect of only thinking of Zayn. His lips, soft and chapped and delicate, the wet, broad tongue, the perfect curve of his smile. He imagines Zayn’s hair in his hand now, Zayn’s stubble against his thighs, Zayn’s gentle hands sweeping through his hair and stroking his face, holding him gently. Rhiannon doesn’t go anywhere near his scar, avoiding it like touching might result in contagion, but Zayn – Zayn touched it like it was beautiful.

Harry coughs over a whimper and redirects himself desperately, Zayn’s delicate hands morphing into strong hands that hold him down, press inside him like they’re trying to carve their way out. The hands are everywhere, engulfing him, pressing him to the bed, gripping his ankles, wrapping around his throat, clawing inside him to feel the wet heave of his heart –

‘Uh, fuck, _Zayn,_ ’ he groans, grinding his hips up, and it’s so indecent in his fucked out voice, like something straight out of a porno. He shudders violently, throat bobbing, before snapping his eyes open – Rhiannon has stopped and is blinking up at him, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Zayn is frozen. Harry fumbles wordlessly, swallowing air, before he forcibly assumes an excited smile and gestures between the two of them. ‘Zayn. Get involved.’

Zayn blinks, dazed. The sound of Harry’s voice echoes between them like an alarm in another room. ‘Uh.’

‘Please,’ says Harry.

Zayn licks his lips, staring at Harry, and then nods, once, twice, and it hurts in Harry’s chest.

The three of them are kneeling, now, looking at each other as though waiting for one to take charge. Rhiannon grips Harry’s arm like she’s urging him to throw one of them to the mattress and start fucking them, but Harry can’t look at her – Zayn is there and he’s miles of brown skin, black ink, muscles shifting under skin. He looks breakable and small and so, so human – the hair on his stomach, the ribs under the skin, the dark pucker of his nipples. It hurts even more, knowing how vulnerable and beautiful and _ordinary_ his naked body is, as though he could be anything but untouchable. 

Harry’s eyes drop down to the dark brush of hair, the red, curved line of his cock, already wet at the tip. He can feel Rhiannon at his side, pressing her nails to his arm, and he feels a surge of irritation at her presence, an urge to shake her off. Zayn’s holding a condom, looking at Harry obliquely, his head half turned away, and everything in the air around him is scarlet and silver with the nervous, jittery energy of sexual potential.

They share one last kiss as Zayn closes the space between the three of them, clumsily walking forward on his knees. He reaches for Harry’s neck, thumb against his cheek, and presses his lips to Harry’s – really presses, close-mouthed, open-eyed, as though he wants to leech the heat of his mouth away. Harry doesn’t dare use his tongue out of fear he’ll taste her on him, and Zayn doesn’t either. He pulls back, strokes Harry’s cheek with his thumb, presses his lips over the line he traced under his cheekbone, and that feels more intimate than the kiss, stunningly so, as he rubs his nose over the skin, as Harry feels the lightest peek of tongue.

Harry might be dead soon. He could burst out of his skin with the sincerity of the truth. But there’s this – this look on Zayn’s face.

There’d always come a day when he’d have to stop searching for truth, for life, for that impermeable slice of heaven on earth. Maybe, in the end, he found it here – a hotel room with a flickering lightbulb, a pile of bodies pressed together.

His hands on his skin. His flesh, skin, bone flush against his flesh, skin, bone. That’s truth. That’s life. Shrapnel-sharp heart making ribbons of his chest, muttering, _yes, yes, yes._

 

-

 

Harry’s alone, damp from the shower, shivering in his towel. His nose burns and itches and he sits on the end of the bed, flicks the TV on and then immediately turns it off again. His anxiety bounces off the walls like an echo, crowding in on him with hissed, sibilant reminders of his solitude. 

He feels strange and blurry, strangely sedated from his orgasm and also alarmingly wide-awake. He feels as though he should text Niall the news of what’s happened, if only to confirm it in writing so it doesn’t transpire to be the result of some weird coke-trip once he’s come down, but despite the lack of intimacy in what’s just happened between the three of them, there was something sacred in it that he can’t lose by sharing it with anyone. 

He waits, bones feeling damp and soggy, ribs wilting like noodles around his heart. His hair drips onto his shoulders, slides down his collarbones, dries somewhere around his nipples. He doesn’t move at all.

The door clicks open and Harry has to stop himself from leaping to his feet and hurtling into Zayn’s arms. He stays on the edge of the bed, blinking like an owl, and watches as Zayn slowly deposits the room keys back onto the dresser and shrugs off his jacket, tossing it into the chair. 

‘Did she get off all right?’ Harry asks, and then winces and laughs at his wording. ‘I mean in the cab. She okay?’

Zayn seems to take a moment to catch his breath. He turns away from Harry. ‘Yeah.’

There’s a pulsing sort of silence.

‘Did you have a good time?’ Harry asks, fingers clenching in the duvet. The towel feels too scratchy against his waist, all of a sudden.

‘Not entirely.’

‘Why?’

Zayn doesn’t say anything. Harry gets a hand on his towel, holding it in place, and stands up.

‘You seemed like you did.’

‘Oh, how fucking perceptive, Harry, well done.’

‘What’s the matter, Zayn?’

‘Did you not feel as though we were fucking _using_ her?’ Zayn asks, clearly furious. He turns on his heel and glares at Harry, mouth twitching angrily.

Harry swallows. ‘She – she had fun,’ he says in a low voice.

‘Yeah? And I spent the whole time wishing I could fucking throw her out the window!’ Zayn tugs at his hair, teeth clenched so hard Harry sees a fleck of spit fly from his mouth. ‘I’m so fucking _sick_ of using people, Harry. I hate it. I fucking hate it.’

He looks so different, angry. Soft, wide-eyed face pulled sharp, tight, the clench of his jaw hard and the lines of his eyes thin. He’s still beautiful, but not in a nice way. Harry would rather pin this Zayn up on the wall behind a glass cabinet, like the Mona Lisa, than reach out and touch him like the Zayn he knew yesterday. Something about that makes him shiver. 

‘What is all this, then?’ Zayn asks, closing the space between them. He pushes Harry’s shoulder, just like Harry did to him a few hours ago. ‘The shirt? The hair? The eyeliner? Why are you doing that?’

Harry’s eyebrows draw together, feeling a stab of self-consciousness so strong it makes his stomach muscles jump. ‘You don’t like it?

Zayn’s eyes widen, in a nuanced, cartoonish display of practised exasperation, framed by his impossible eyelashes. ‘I don’t li –?’ He breaks off, laughing without humour. ‘Jesus, Harry, that’s not the problem here.’

He turns away, striding across the room. He picks up Harry’s discarded clothes and then throws them down again; he tugs at the curtain and then pulls it shut. His hands are desperate, touching anything, and Harry finds that he has no idea what to say. He shrinks in on himself, back against the wall, and clutches at his towel. The coke crackles pathetically in his bloodstream, tearing at his breath. 

‘What is the problem?’ he asks in a small voice.

‘You!’ Zayn snaps, turning again, and Harry’s heart sharpens like someone’s turned up the brightness on a phone screen, feels so unbearably real in his chest. ‘You doing all this stupid stuff, attention seeking. All the fucking time, as if – as if you don’t see.’

He takes a tentative breath. ‘Don’t see what?’

‘That I like you.’ Zayn’s voice breaks; he rubs over his face with both hands as Harry blinks at him owlishly, and when his hands drop, he looks terrified. His gaze slips away from him, darts to the door and the mangled bed covers and the bin with the condom and the table with the remnants of coke, and everything around them is sordid and disgusting but underneath the stinging blush creeping up his neck, the dramatic roar of his heartbeat, Harry feels nothing but clean. 

‘I have for ages,’ Zayn says, swallowing loudly. He looks at the floor emptily, and Harry’s struck by the fact that embarrassment is probably the only thing he doesn’t do beautifully. He looks so normal, so bewildered by his own feelings, and it creates new possibilities in Harry’s heart – that all of Harry’s unsmoothed coarseness isn’t wildly inappropriate next to Zayn and all his effortless grace. Scarcely anything is perfect, except maybe the look on Zayn’s face when he finally glances up and stares at Harry. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, trembling with it. ‘I just – I don’t want this anymore. I can’t stand fucking around anymore.’

Everything in Harry softens. ‘Zayn.’

Zayn groans, scratching the back of his reddening neck. ‘Sorry. I – I want to be straight with you. Or – or not straight. I’m… not straight. I don’t think I’m straight.’

Harry’s lips press together. ‘Stop saying sorry,’ he says, looking at his toes.

‘I think I really like you. A lot. Too much.’ His voice dips, and when Harry looks up, he finds that Zayn’s right in front of him, gazing at him anxiously. ‘I’m sorry. Harry. Please.’

‘Please?’

‘Say something.’ He reaches for Harry’s waist, thumb against the scar, and Harry just stares at him, waits for the inevitable recoil in his own heart, waits for Zayn’s disgust. Nothing happens, and he’s suddenly so frightened he feels his knees might give in. 

‘Why are you saying sorry?’

‘Because I’m being honest,’ Zayn says, and his voice is so soft, so deliberate. ‘And usually when you’re honest, it makes it easier to say sorry.’

Harry’s vision is starting to close in, inverting like he’s seeing through the reflection of a spoon. He almost wants to hit his head against the wall, to stop the bellowing of his traitorous heart to grab this and never let go, the one thing that could be his, now. The one thing he can make belong to him. It’s all he’s wanted, and now he’s terrified, because to let himself have this would be so stupid, so selfish, when he knows it’s about to be taken away.

‘Can I be more honest and awful and super cringe? You taught me to love life again,’ Zayn says, reaching for Harry’s face with both of his hands. His eyes round and bright, focussed so intently on Harry he has to draw in a sharp breath through his teeth. ‘I forgot how to feel excited. I forgot how to breathe and – and really _feel_ it. But I feel it with you. Through you. The whole world’s a different colour with you. Do you see?’

Harry chokes on nothing.

‘You’ll have to look after me, because you know I – I’ve only ever loved one person before. I don’t know how to do anything. I – I don’t know who to be.’ He presses his fingernails into Harry’s temples, holding onto him. ‘But I promise I’ll look after you. I promised you already. I promise, Harry.’

Harry tilts his head back against the wall. He fists Zayn’s t-shirt uncertainly, awash with a hazy, heartfelt panic. ‘Wow, Zayn,’ is all he can say.

‘You can say if you don’t want me,’ Zayn says, murmuring under his breath, ‘but I think you do. God, I hope you do. Tell me, H.’ He’s so close now he can feel the heat of Zayn’s breath against his mouth. ‘I think we could be something. Even if it’s just friends who kiss. Or not-friends who don’t kiss. I just think that there’s a line, for friendship, and it’s not – it’s not ours, anymore. You know? You want me, Harry?’

Harry feels delirious, so overcome with lust and fear and surprise. His resolve seems to brim, burst and then spill over, dribbling down his body and pooling hopelessly at his feet. ‘Yeah,’ Harry breathes, eyelids fluttering closed as Zayn brushes his lips against Harry’s cheek, the gentlest flash of heat that swims through his body and curls like a puff of smoke around Harry’s heart. It’s so sweet he could cry. 

So Harry leans forward and kisses him, right on the mouth. ‘I want you so much,’ he promises.

Zayn strokes his thumb against Harry’s broken mouth. ‘Why?’

Harry can’t even think properly. He suddenly feels the force of the early morning, feels it cloud his brain like he’s just smoked a bowl. ‘Because you know so many words,’ Harry says, smiling brokenly when Zayn rolls his eyes. ‘What’s that one? Ensey –’

‘Ensorcell. To en–’

‘Enchant or fascinate. Yeah.’ He breathes in a gasp, gripping Zayn’s t-shirt so hard he feels the fabric under his nails. ‘I’m not fascinating, Zayn. I’m not anything.’

‘You are. I learned that word for you. All my words are about you.’

A shiver runs up Harry’s spine like a power cut rippling through a block of flats. ‘I’m – I’m not ever enough,’ he admits, voice hoarse. ‘Not even for myself. You should know that. I’m all I have.’ 

‘That’s all I want,’ Zayn says, and in that moment, as they look at each other, he can feel parts of himself he hasn’t felt for the longest time. The agonising waver of his heartbeat. The blood in his ears. The want in his chest. 

‘I’m falling apart, Zayn,’ he whispers, and it’s the most honest thing he’s said in years. 

‘I’ve got you,’ Zayn says. ‘I promise.’

And then they kiss.

 

\- 

 

At first, it’s just a brush, a tiny burst of heat, a press of their mouths together. It’s soft and gentle and they spend a long time kissing just like that; Zayn keeps Harry pressed against the wall, one hand on his face and the other clutching his hand. 

Harry can never help himself, though: he grasps Zayn’s elbows and leans back, tilting his head, and as he pulls Zayn closer his lips fall apart, and he mouths wetly at Zayn’s bottom lip, humming when Zayn’s tongue swipes out to meet his. 

His stubble pulls against Harry’s cheek and his tongue is sharp and inquisitive and has the edge of desperation that Harry never lets himself give into, because he’s always thought it’s uncool, too disarming. Zayn doesn’t seem to care, though; he closes in on Harry, clutching at him – his hair, his waist, his arms, his neck – kissing him harder and deeper until Harry’s barely breathing at all, light-headed and slumped against the wall, his thigh tucked between Zayn’s, breath lost somewhere in Zayn’s lungs.

He wants to slow down, to kiss Zayn like he always imagined he would the first time – slow and careful, tasting and learning and letting himself really commit it to memory, but it’s so hard when Zayn’s biting at him, pushing and pushing like he wants to soak into Harry’s skin, until it starts to hurt where his back is pressed up against the wall. Every time they draw apart for breath, Harry leans forward in a trance, chasing Zayn’s wet mouth, and Zayn presses back in desperately, shoves him back so hard his head smacks against the wall. He’s hard through his jeans, so hard it makes Harry’s hands shake, and it’s insane to Harry, entirely unbelievable, that he’s caused that. That Zayn’s hard for him.

‘I really like you,’ Zayn exhales in a fan of warm air right against Harry’s mouth, stroking Harry’s hair from his face. Harry can’t stop; he tugs Zayn back in by his hair, licks over his mouth, presses his lips to Zayn’s so what he says next is mangled. ‘More than anything, Harry.’

Altogether, it’s quite fucking devastating, actually.

Zayn pulls away properly, reaches behind his head to tug his t-shirt off for the second time that evening, and sits down on the bed with deliberate eye-contact, smiling with the jittery sort of excitement that Harry hasn’t seen on anyone in a long time. Harry’s still draped in the stupid towel which is doing nothing to disguise his hard-on; he contemplates slipping it off before considering he might alarm Zayn, and so yanks it up his hips from where it’d slipped, keeping a firm grip on it. 

He steps forward towards Zayn’s outstretched arm and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror – he looks pale, bleary eyed, lips sore and red. He’s glad no one’s here to see how colossally the universe has fucked up by allowing Zayn to fancy him, but when he looks back at Zayn collapsed on the bed, Zayn stares like he’s never seen anything like him before. 

‘What you looking at?’ Harry asks with a dry, heavy tongue, smiling in spite of himself.

Zayn just shakes his head, pulling him to the bed and laughing as Harry clutches carefully at his towel, nearly toppling headfirst onto him. 

He presses a soft, single kiss to Harry’s mouth, pulling at his lower lip between his own. 

‘Gorgeous,’ he says, shaking his head again. ‘Very fucking gorgeous.’

Harry feels a prickle of self-consciousness which doesn’t go away as Zayn presses him back against the mattress, mouth hot against Harry’s neck. His heart is banging like window shutters flapping in a storm, reverent and with such force he imagines it reverberating against his ribs, and it’s almost as though it’s him that’s never been with a boy before rather than Zayn, who’s leaving trails of saliva across Harry’s skin and prompting a dangerous, sticky heat to pool in Harry’s stomach.

‘You smell so good,’ he says, biting at Harry’s shoulder hard enough that Harry winces. He licks at his collarbone, traces the shape of it with the point of his tongue before flattening it thickly over his manubrium. Harry just lies there, experiencing what he imagines is akin to a coronary when Zayn lifts his head to grin impishly. ‘You okay?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Wanted to do this for ages,’ Zayn admits, pressing a soft kiss to Harry’s mouth before dipping his head again, hands loose around Harry’s wrists, and sucks a lovebite over Harry’s heart, nipping the skin delicately.

‘You’re such a cliché,’ Harry teases in a throaty voice, closing his eyes and resisting the urge to arch his back when Zayn’s tongue circles his nipple.

‘Does that feel good?’ Zayn asks. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘Yeah,’ Harry breathes, tensing when Zayn does it again. ‘Love that.’

‘Noted.’ He smudges kisses over Harry’s sternum, nosing at the sparse chest hairs he’s trying to be proud of. ‘What else do you like?’

‘Uh,’ Harry says inanely, distracted because Zayn tentatively licks near his armpit. ‘Um – what –’

‘Smell so good,’ Zayn mutters again. He lifts Harry’s arm by his wrist and kisses right under the patch of hair that Harry’s very suddenly pleased he scrubbed with the avocado-scented bodywash provided by the hotel. ‘Is this weird?’

‘A bit.’

‘Sorry.’ He pulls Harry’s arm back gently. 

‘Nice weird, though.’

‘Okay, good.’ Zayn leans back in, presses his mouth to the dip of skin just under his armpit. ‘Fuck. Smells like –’

‘What?’

‘Like – like boy.’ Zayn sits up, hair a mess, in a state of breathless delirium that has Harry keening beneath him. Zayn repositions himself, bending to bite Harry’s jaw unthinkingly, and the new angle has their crotches brushing. ‘Fuck.’

In a word, Harry’s fucking astonished. He lies there like a corpse, eyes squeezed shut as though he’s about to get hit by a car, because in all his years of fucking and being fucked and falling in love, this is – it’s new. Nobody kisses him like this.

‘Look at this flat farmer boy stomach,’ Zayn says, rubbing his hand over it carefully, studiously, as if he needs to be delicate with him.

‘Hardly. Just get to cuddle sheep all day.’

‘The best kind of farmer.’ Zayn runs a finger down the jagged track of Harry’s ribs, bottom lip hanging low and devastatingly wet, and shakes his head dazedly. ‘God, Harry.’

‘What?’

‘Can you believe this is happening?’

Zayn smiles up at him, eyes bright with excitement and nervousness and everything else in between. Harry reaches a hand to cup his jaw, his thumb soft against Zayn’s cheekbone, and for a moment he feels Zayn all over him, the weight of his body pressing so hard he begins to leak through him, in the folds of his skin, in the gaps between his bones, in the echo and groan of his heart.

Zayn dips his head once more, sponging his lips down Harry’s chest to his stomach, glancing up at him again through his eyelashes – as though checking – before cautiously pressing his lips to the puckered scar drawn into Harry’s hip.

It’s hard to breathe over the pull of his own heart. He lies there, one hand static on Zayn’s face, breathing through his mouth, and says nothing.

‘You’ve been through the wars, huh?’ Zayn asks quietly.

Harry gulps. The whole universe feels thin like wet newspaper. If he was standing, he’s fairly sure he would have collapsed by now. ‘Something like that.’ He stares very hard at the ceiling, something thick lurching in his gut. It spills out of his mouth before he can stop himself – ‘It’s so ugly.’ 

‘What?’

‘It’s ugly,’ Harry whispers, mouth wobbling like it’s a terrible secret. ‘I hate it.’

Zayn kisses the dreadful skin of the scar again. ‘I don’t think so,’ he says, settling properly between Harry’s legs. 

Harry doesn’t look at him, unconvinced. ‘You’re so cringe, Zayn.’

‘Soz,’ Zayn says unapologetically, shrugging with both shoulders.

‘I feel like an indulgently insecure protagonist in a YA novel right now.’ He closes his eyes for a moment, arching his back when Zayn’s teeth catch against the skin below his navel, licking over the hair there. He exhales a long, trailing _fuck_ that actually makes Zayn groan. ‘What is it? _And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…_ ’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. _What a sick, masochistic lion._ ’

Harry laughs, choking off when Zayn’s tongue traces his belly button. ‘God. That was fucking terrible. Even _I_ thought that was tragic.’

Zayn grins as he starts tentatively fingering at his towel. ‘We’re weird.’

‘A good match.’

Zayn daubes his lips with his tongue and blinks up at him. ‘Can I take this off?’ he asks, pulling at the towel with more purpose.

Harry pulls his hand through Zayn’s hair and stares at him, the cautious light breaking his perfect face into pieces, the smile in his eyes that doesn’t look at all scared, that doesn’t seem to fade. 

And this – _this_ is it. Everything. Anything.

He can’t do anything but nod.

Zayn doesn’t peel away the towel like Richard Gere would do if this were _Pretty Woman_ – he pulls it open eagerly and brushes it to the side with palpable enthusiasm and an unwavering focus, breathing heavily on Harry’s uncovered dick.

They don’t speak for a while. Harry has to close his eyes.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Zayn says, strangled. ‘This is. Uh.’

Harry swallows. ‘What?’

‘Weird.’

An indignant sound falls from Harry’s mouth. ‘Well, thanks a bunch.’

‘Just, like. As I said. It’s kinda big.’

Harry swallows again, pressing his free hand over his eye socket. ‘I guess.’

‘Um. Yeah.’

Harry waits for Zayn to do something, to elaborate, but he’s met with a silence so prolonged he blinks his eyes open, stroking three fingers over Zayn’s face again. ‘It just looks bigger now because it’s so … um, do you know what to –’ 

‘Do you…’ Zayn coughs; the hot air over Harry’s dick makes him flinch. ‘Have you put this in people?’

Breath fans from Harry’s nose in a silent laugh. ‘A few.’

‘Guys?’

‘Mmm.’ There’s a pause. ‘We don’t have to do that.’

Zayn takes a rough, jagged breath. ‘Not now. I just wanna –’

Harry tries to be reassuring again, tell Zayn not to rush anything, but the words fizzle against the roof of his mouth when Zayn tentatively licks his tongue out, stroking Harry in a flash of wet heat. Harry’s breath snaps against the roof of his mouth.

‘Don’t really know what I’m doing,’ Zayn admits, almost worried as he pulls back. Spit shines on his bottom lip. ‘Uh. Should I –’

‘Just, like –’ Harry breaks off to prop himself up on one arm. The sight of Zayn hovering by his cock, staring at it with wide-eyed awe as confusion pulls at his pink mouth is quite a lot to take in. ‘Okay. Just go slow. Open your mouth.’

Zayn does so with devastating obedience.

‘Okay, fuck. And just –’

He guides Zayn’s hand, and once his fingers wrap around him, Harry’s mouth falls open, eyelids fluttering. Zayn experimentally grips him with a firm hand, pulls up his wrist, and Harry grabs for his hair, fingers pressing to his scalp as precome dribbles down Zayn’s fingers.

‘That’s – good yeah?’

‘Yeah. So good.’

Zayn goes on without further guidance, one hand on Harry’s hip, thumbing over the scar. Harry watches him reverently, eyelids drooping, and for a few beautiful minutes it’s okay – sloppy and unpractised and very hesitant, but it’s Zayn so it doesn’t matter.

Harry’s breathing shallows, murmuring what he hopes is encouraging stuff about how fit Zayn looks, synapses snapping as he revels in the feel of the rough drag of Zayn’s tongue, the sexy, practised way Zayn tries to maintain eye contact. He definitely got that from porn. It turns Harry on more than he’d care to admit. 

‘Look so good, babe,’ Harry says with a low groan, grinning because Zayn’s mouth – his fucking _tongue_ , wide and thick ¬– was honestly _made_ for this, and he has to stop himself from bucking his hips up at the searing heat of Zayn’s gaze as he responds to the praise. Clearly he likes it, so in a hoarse voice Harry says it again, and at that Zayn gets a bit too over-excited, moaning a little and pulling back with a harsh scrape of teeth.

‘Ow! Shit, don’t do that.’

Zayn pulls off entirely, mouth wet. ‘Fuck, sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’ Harry sits up again, scratching his fingers through Zayn’s hair. He smiles at the focus of Zayn’s downcast eyes. ‘Come here. Wanna kiss you.’

‘You didn’t come!’ Zayn says with a stubborn pout, not moving.

Harry bites back a laugh. ‘That was only a few minutes.’

‘So?’

He quirks an eyebrow. ‘Zayn. You’ve never done that before. Be realistic.’

Zayn looks mutinous, glaring down at Harry’s slick cock sulkily. ‘Are you saying it was bad?’

‘Nooooooo.’ Harry manages to pull him in and flops back on the bed, arms tight around Zayn’s waist. He smiles into Zayn’s shoulder and kisses it softly. ‘It was amazing.’

‘Don’t lie, Haz,’ Zayn says grumpily, poking at his stomach. ‘Give me tips. I want to be the best.’

‘Mr Competitive.’

‘Love a challenge, me.’

Harry smiles, nosing at Zayn’s neck. ‘We’ll get lots of practise. You’ll be even better than me soon.’

Zayn huffs, but the suggestion has the unabashed weight of his cock twitching against Harry’s hip. ‘What, cos you’re the resident expert?’

‘If you want references, I’ve got a long list.’ 

Zayn exhales roughly against Harry’s hair, and when Harry pulls back to look at him, his mouth is downturned, nose wrinkling.

‘Oi,’ Harry says, bopping Zayn’s cheek with his nose. He basks in the feeling of how close they are, how much air they’re sharing, how easy it would be to count Zayn’s eyelashes. He wants this all the time. He’s never wanted anything like he wants this. ‘I really like you, you know.’

Zayn’s mouth wobbles, like he’s trying to pull down a smile.

‘Like, a lot,’ Harry goes on, beaming. ‘Loads. Too much.’

Zayn shakes his head, smile threatening harder. ‘Not enough.’

Harry slides his palms up Zayn’s warm back, overwhelmed by the soft warmth of his skin, by the fact that finally, he’s allowed to touch. ‘Oh, Malik. If only you knew.’

‘Wish I did,’ Zayn says, grinning into the corner of Harry’s mouth when Harry brushes their lips together. ‘You should tell me.’

‘So sulky, poor baby.’

‘Wanna be the only one for you,’ Zayn teases in a fake-sultry voice, squirming when Harry squeezes his sides.

‘Too bad I’m already married with ten kids.’

Zayn tuts. ‘So many secrets,’ he murmurs, dipping his head in search for a kiss, and Harry’s head reels when their open mouths slot together, wet and warm, his stomach clanging like an elevator shaft when Zayn groans.

‘Tell me,’ he breathes into Harry’s mouth, eyes falling shut.

Harry digs his nails into Zayn’s back, hard enough that he winces. ‘I’ll show you.’ He slides a hand down Zayn’s back and squeezes his arse over his jeans, feels his stomach clench dreadfully when Zayn’s breath hitches.

They kiss again, although it deepens and shifts into something scorching and intense, groaning and licking and biting, and Harry hooks an arm around Zayn’s neck so he can’t pull away, his other hand slipping under Zayn’s jeans. Zayn straddles him confidently, mouth hot and sure against Harry’s, but his hand is cautious as it presses to Harry’s cock, rubbing it tentatively between them. ‘Take your jeans off,’ Harry breathes, trying to centre all of his weight in his hips so they don’t jerk up, ‘and I’ll show you.’

Zayn squints at him, intrigued, as he climbs off Harry, and he’s barely got one knee back on the bed before Harry launches himself at him, flipping him over. Hovering over Zayn, he presses short kisses against his face – his cheek, his nose, the corner of his mouth – until Zayn’s squirming, laughing, batting Harry away, but the laughter vanishes from his mouth when Harry dips his hips to rub against Zayn, only a flimsy pair of straining boxers between them.

‘Feels good, doesn’t it,’ Harry says, smiling softly, but Zayn looks dazed, staring vacantly at Harry as he does it again, gripping at the hair gathering at the nape of his neck. Harry grinds his hips harder, more purposefully, working up to a rhythm, and sucks his lips into his mouth to stifle a groan when Zayn’s own mouth opens wordlessly. ‘You okay?’

‘Uh,’ is all Zayn says, uncharacteristically incoherent.

Not content, Harry reaches between them and pulls down Zayn’s boxers, swallowing when he feels wetness against his palm. ‘What do you want?’ he asks, teeth soft on Zayn’s jaw. ‘I’ll do anything. Wanna fuck me?’

Zayn makes a strangled noise. Harry rubs his thumb over the head of his cock, presses down on the slit – Zayn’s hips lift off the bed.

‘Could do it, if you want,’ Harry mumbles, smudging his mouth down Zayn’s neck. ‘I want it. Really bad.’

‘We don’t – _ah_. We don’t have any lube.’ He pauses, teeth grinding, and then adds tentatively, ‘That’s – we’d need that. Wouldn’t we?’

‘I honestly don’t care right now,’ Harry says, biting Zayn’s shoulder. ‘I could take it.’

‘No, I’d – I’d last about five seconds,’ Zayn manages to say, shaking his head. ‘Oh, shit, don’t stop.’

Harry’s tongue curls into Zayn’s mouth, soaks up the noises he makes as he grinds up helplessly into Harry’s hand. 

‘You’re so fit,’ Harry breathes into his mouth, Zayn’s tongue catching messily against Harry’s teeth on the _F_. ‘Tell me what you want me to do to you.’

Zayn just gasps, eyes squeezed shut, head falling back to the pillow.

Harry chokes out a laugh. ‘Zayn. Not helping.’

He trails his hand up, scratches his fingers in the dark hair above Zayn’s dick. Zayn trembles and Harry revels in it, the air between them that Zayn snatches into his lungs, the pliant expectation, the trust and confidence he has in Harry. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

‘I want you to come on me,’ Zayn says, almost shyly, his voice breathy and broken as he blinks at Harry with huge eyes. ‘Want you all over me.’

Harry stares back at him, rapt, completely helpless. His heart feels too hot, too sloppy, like ice cream as the sweet feeling he feels drips down inside his ribs, coats his stomach. He kisses Zayn’s mouth gently, and there’s a whole universe of untold feeling in his chest, so much of it he wants to rub over his heart and ease the crammed, overbearing tension, but instead he does what he always does – swallows the emotion away, and does as he’s told.

He gets a hand around Zayn’s cock, no longer teasing as he pumps it fast, catching his own dick against the hard ridges of his knuckles. Zayn gulps and twists beneath Harry, gasping as though this came as a surprise, but even as close as they are, they don’t speak. 

Harry looks at him. The glimmer of sweat like gold eyeshadow that appears every time Zayn’s eyelids flutter. The lightest icing sugar freckles on his nose. The little glitch of his iris, that tiny extra spot leaking out. The always chapped lips, the perfectly tiny pores, the sharp sweep of his insane bone structure. He feels closer than he’s ever been to anyone else, as Zayn chokes and wheezes and presses his fingers into Harry’s neck, arms tensing. Harry stares, heart pulsing in his throat, and feels an infinitesimal part of him seize up, reminding him of the lies that blanket him like a fucking straightjacket. 

What does it matter, now?

He presses his forehead against Zayn’s and doesn’t stop looking.

Both hands come to rest either side of Zayn’s face, hips working of their own accord as they grind down fast against Zayn’s. It’s probably too dry and too much friction for Zayn, but he whimpers loudly, mouth opening as he pants and bucks up to meet Harry.

‘You’re so good at this,’ Zayn breathes, scratching at Harry’s back viciously. ‘God, shit –’

Harry can’t reply; he fights against the pull of his eyelids to keep watching, to keep focussed, and he groans loudly when Zayn’s hand slips down his back, palms at his arse, before he tentatively slots his fingers between his cheeks. His hips jerk forward hard, and Zayn’s whole face screws up.

‘Oh, I’m gonna come.’ He licks his lips and Harry feels his tongue against his own mouth. ‘I’m gonna come.’

‘Please,’ Harry whispers, and he presses a kiss to Zayn’s mouth. ‘Please.’ 

He does. And even when Harry comes, all over Zayn like he asked, he can’t look away.

 

-

 

It’s six am by the time they stop kissing. 

Zayn’s even more malleable after orgasm than he is before – ‘come here,’ he mumbles after Harry stumbles back from the loo, voice deep and slurred, ‘sorry, I’m clingy after sex’ – and Harry presses his face against Zayn’s shoulder, his fingers hungry on Zayn’s skin and his mouth soft on Zayn’s neck.

‘’m so tired,’ Harry says, licking Zayn’s neck just because he can. ‘We should probably shower.’

‘Can’t be arsed,’ Zayn says, kissing the top of Harry’s head. ‘D’ya mind if I have a cig?’

‘I suppose we’ve already wrecked the room enough.’ Harry smirks and heaves himself up to give Zayn room, legs still tangled with Zayn’s under the covers as he leans over the side of the bed for his jeans and fishes out a cigarette and lighter, one arm tucked behind his head as he rests against the headboard with the fag caught between his teeth.

‘I wish I had my camera right now,’ Harry murmurs, resting his cheek on his knee as he stares at him. ‘You look like a movie-star.’ Zayn smiles, presses his fingers to Harry’s face. 

‘Plenty more time for that,’ he says, and Harry closes his eyes, trying to believe him. ‘My family are gonna be so pleased, you know.’

Harry cracks open one eye, squinting at him carefully. ‘They will?’

Zayn blows smoke out of the side of his mouth and smiles sheepishly. ‘Well, yeah. I told my parents and sisters I fancy you on Christmas Day, so naturally my entire family and the whole street found out.’ He chews on his lip, oblivious to the small fanfare that’s started in Harry’s chest, the booming staccato of his heartbeat. ‘I think even Qais could tell. I’m pretty sure, anyway.’

Zayn’s smile wilts slightly, kiss-worn lips drooping, and Harry reaches for his free hand, slotting their fingers together. Everything feels unreal and distant in the watery early morning light dripping through the curtains, and Harry just blinks at him heavily, unsure of what to say.

‘I’m sorry I snapped at you yesterday,’ Zayn says, ashing his cigarette into the mug the hotel’s left out for tea, his thumb rubbing over the flimsy bones jutting against the skin of Harry’s palm. ‘I love Bradford, but I – I hate it too. So much, for so many reasons. I can’t expect you to like it.’

‘I do,’ Harry says quietly, squeezing Zayn’s hand. ‘I do love it. It’s yours.’

Zayn chews on his lower lip, gazing at Harry unabashedly, and Harry feels a low pulse of affection, snaking up his arm from where their hands are pressed together to wrap carefully around his lungs, like a blanket, like a promise. 

‘Qais was beaten up,’ Zayn says, his voice low and strung out. ‘Three years ago. He was in a gang.’

Harry’s breath seizes. He doesn’t even dare to blink.

‘It was part of the culture on the estate he lived on. Once boys reach a – a certain age, they kind of just get sucked into it.’ Zayn’s cigarette burns between his fingers, a devilish red pulsing as it eats up the paper. ‘Nobody gives a fuck about kids from Bradford. He’s so smart, he could have been a doctor or something, you know? He speaks three languages like me. He did well in school. But it’s just – it’s so hard, to have this brain, this _voice_ , and feel like no one gives a fuck about you. No one cares what you have to say. You’re just another brown boy from a rough estate in Bradistan. You know?’

Harry swallows. The warmth of Zayn’s hand feels like it’s searing him.

‘It’s so easy to get caught up in it. Drugs, girls, stealing cars, fighting each other. More drugs. More fights. Rinse and repeat.’ He blinks hard and looks up at the ceiling. ‘I was lucky I never got – like, tempted by it. I always knew who I was. People thought I was fucking odd, mind.’ He scratches at his stubble with his knuckles, cigarette smoke curling in front of his face. ‘I was the weird kid who liked comics and went to the mosque and played in the school orchestra and had this rich white girlfriend. I was too brown and poor for the white kids and not tough enough for most of the brown ones. But I didn’t care.’

Zayn swallows, tapering off with a pull in his tone that Harry guesses is exhaustion.

‘Most kids care, though. Qais cared. He wanted to be cool, you know. And he didn’t have to pick a side or find himself in the middle, like me. He was born into a side, in the eyes of the estate. He got beaten up by this gang of white thugs, for being a Paki. They didn’t like Qais’ lot dealing on what they called their turf, as if it was – was on a fucking map or something. As though just because they’re white, they automatically get precedent over everything.’ He snorts, jaw moving side to side. Harry hears it click. ‘Well, I suppose they do, don’t they? They certainly thought so. Bashed his head so hard his skull caved in. And now he…’ 

Zayn’s voice thickens and he stops abruptly, turning to deposit the end of his cigarette into the mug.

‘Zayn,’ Harry says, circling the fingers of his free hand around Zayn’s wrist. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Zayn says huffily. Harry frowns, and Zayn pulls his hand from behind his head to brush his fingers across Harry’s cheek. ‘I just – I want you to understand. It’s a problem bigger than me. And I – I want to be able to do shit about it.’ Harry nods stupidly, his gaze tracing the lines of Zayn’s tight mouth, his tense jaw. ‘He’s my little cousin,’ Zayn says, rubbing his lips together as though trying to stop himself from crying. ‘I think of him, and I remember him as Kenickie when his school did Grease. That’s what comes to mind – him with his hair slicked back in a leather jacket. And trying to sneakily bum a cigarette off me when we were walking to school when we were younger. He didn’t even know how to inhale it properly. And now look at him.’

Zayn blinks hard, eyes shifting to the ceiling. 

‘That stuff never goes away,’ Harry promises, heart stuttering when Zayn’s thumb catches on the corner of his mouth. ‘I still think about Gemma wetting herself when we drove to Blackpool and my grandpa wouldn’t stop at a service station. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she pissed all over her new shorts.’

There’s a pause, and then Zayn laughs, eyes scrunching, and Harry grins back at him, a deep eruption of happiness pulling in his chest like a light bursting on, growing brighter and brighter as Zayn pulls him in and drapes Harry over his lap.

He rests one hand on Harry’s thigh, smiling into the kiss Harry deposits breathlessly to his swollen mouth, their noses brushing. 

‘Thank you,’ Zayn says against his lips. Harry just breathes in response.

Zayn pulls away, licks his lips as though savouring the taste of Harry, and walks his fingers gently over Harry’s collarbone.

‘I have a question,’ Zayn says, eyes on Harry’s sternum. There’s a nervous lilt to his voice and Harry pushes his hair away from his face, rubbing a thumb over the cartilage of his ear. He hums gently. ‘Do you – do you believe stuff is like, meant to happen?’

Harry sniffs as he considers this. Zayn’s eyes are on him, unrelenting, and so to buy himself time he presses forward and catches Zayn’s mouth in a slow, dirty kiss, tongues catching. 

‘I don’t think so,’ he concludes carefully, bottom lip dragging as he mouths along Zayn’s jaw. ‘Do you?’

‘Yeah,’ Zayn says, pulling Harry closer by his hip. He’s half-hard again under Harry, pupils wide and mouth open, neck stretched searchingly. ‘I do.’

‘You do?’

Zayn nods. ‘It’s raining, do you hear?’

Harry listens. He hears the patter of rain against the hotel window, the breezy wash of it soaking through the sky. He hears a car’s tyres skid, a honk of a horn, and he imagines the windscreen wipers scraping, the click of an umbrella. ‘From the stars,’ he says, smiling.

‘Yeah, from the stars. Like us.’ Zayn runs his thumbnail along Harry’s cheekbone, holding his gaze. His eyes are so warm, Harry feels like he’s crackling under it, burning like Icarus flying too close to the sun, wax-heart dripping as it melts. ‘I think it’s meant to be,’ breathes Zayn. ‘I think we’re from the same star.’

 

-

 

It’s still drizzling on the morning of January 3rd as Harry and Bess trudge through the Catterlock churchyard, nodding their hello to various patrons of the farmers’ market. Alan tips his hat and asks politely about Harry’s Christmas; Janet Morrell leaps out from behind her craft stall to embrace him, holding his waist just a little longer than necessary as she enquires after his ‘lovely Asian friend.’ 

Harry just grins, assaulted by the image of Zayn spread out on the hotel bed, come still glistening on his heaving stomach, debauchery at its most beautiful. _If only she knew._

He’s halfway up the path when little Lizzie Baxter tugs on the tips of his fingers and asks if he’d like to buy a bouquet, blinking up at him earnestly from beneath her fringe. She must be the same age as Joni will be by now, approaching six, and Harry’s helpless to it; he digs around in his pocket for spare change and finds £1.38 in coppers, depositing it into her little hand and accepting the bouquet of a handful of damp daisies, looped together into a lopsided chain, that he tucks around Bess’ collar.

‘Here he is!’ Liam bellows as Harry approaches the jam stall. Louis’ sat behind him in a camping chair, feet propped on a box; he leaps to his feet and glares at Harry, hands on his hips.

‘What fucking time do you call this, pal?’

Harry places a hand flat on his head to stop his hood from slipping and peers at the clockface on the church belltower. ‘Well, St Mary’s has got it at ten past –’ 

‘Don’t be smart with me, Romeo! You said you’d be here.’

‘Sorry. Here now, though.’ He clambers around the back of the makeshift stall and claps his hands together, looking around. There seems to be an inordinate amount of stock, several piles of it, and Louis’ lounging again in the only chair in sight. ‘Where’s Niall?’

‘Being a traitor,’ Louis snaps, eyes glued to his iPhone as he picks raspberry seeds out of his teeth. ‘He’s helping at Lewis Murray’s stall. Why pick that batty old codger over us?’

Harry blinks at him. ‘Lewis Murray is deaf.’

‘Whatever.’ 

Harry takes a calming breath and pretends to organise the float, turning his back to Louis. ‘Have you made much?’

‘Only one sale, thus far,’ says Liam in an optimistic voice. ‘I think it’ll fly off the shelves once word gets around, though. This is our best recipe yet.’

Harry purses his lips and looks doubtfully at the queue forming for Betty Townsend’s homemade parmesan bread, three stalls over.

‘When did you get back, Styles?’ Louis locks his phone and stares at Harry critically. ‘The dog’s missed you.’

‘Late last night,’ says Harry shortly, wincing when Louis aims an elbow at his forearm. ‘Ow, don’t –’

‘And how was it? Did you finally get past first base?’

Harry rolls his eyes and carefully rearranges his sweater sleeves, omitting a filler noise as Louis continues to assault him with pokes and kicks of increasing intensity. Liam gasps dramatically, reaching for his left hand and tugging violently at the sleeve of his jumper.

‘A tattoo!’ he squeals, going to slap the clingfilm over his forearm and then thinking better of it and settling for pinching his bicep instead. ‘Oh my God, Harry!’

‘What did he get?’ Louis asks, shoving Liam out of the way. ‘Don’t tell me you got some boring tragic French quote, Styles –’

‘– or Kate Moss’ face –’

‘– what is that?’ Louis cocks his head to the side, squinting. ‘Is it –’

‘It’s a rose,’ says Harry, snatching his arm away. He scratches his reddening cheek and turns away in embarrassment.

‘Oh, of course it bloody is.’

‘How very Shakespeare of you.’

‘Did Zayn read you a sonnet and give you a handy while you were getting it done?’

‘Quite big for your first tattoo, init? Did it hurt?’

Harry shrugs. ‘A bit.’

‘Oooh, hard man!’ They both snigger, and then Louis closes in, hooking his chin over Harry’s shoulder. ‘Did lover boy get one too?’

Harry elbows him in the stomach, satisfies in the _oof!_ sound Louis makes. ‘He did, as it happens,’ he says haughtily.

At his side, Liam grins like a comic book character. ‘Did he get a matching one?’

Harry pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth, staring with immense concentration at the grass until Liam asks him again.

‘Kind of,’ he mutters, nose burning. His gaze is choppy, restless, as the weight of their expectancy sags against his shoulders, before he admits, ‘He got a lotus flower.’

‘Oh God,’ Louis groans, ‘It’s happening. They’re fucking. They’re in love. It happened.’

Harry curls his fingers in the pockets of his jumper, sniffing delicately. He thinks of Zayn in the tattoo chair, legs spread like they were when Harry sucked him off just before they checked out of the hotel room, eyes wide and pupils blown, his free hand on Harry’s thigh. He smiles into the collar of his jumper, nose scrunching.

_It’s happening. It happened._

Harry’s little corner of the universe suddenly has a wider plain, a brighter sun, a clearer, broader sky, all for having Zayn in it, running through it like a breeze, plunging through it like a hand. Searching. Finding. 

‘I knew it’d work,’ Liam says, clapping Harry on the shoulder.

Harry blinks. ‘Knew what’d work?’

‘Zayn’s plan!’

‘What plan?’ Harry asks, thrown. 

Liam stares at him like he’s stupid, laughing, and then gives his shoulder a little shake. 

‘Leaving you those Kit Kats!’ Liam says, studying him with an incredulous frown. ‘He made me do it for weeks. How did you not know?’

And just like that – the clearer, broader sky collapses, and everything’s black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for M/M/F sex scene! Explicit drug use! Discussion of violence and racism!


	9. (NINE) Ellen von Unwerth, 2008, Double Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More warnings at the end!

With a jolt of recognition so strong it renders him entirely breathless, he spots her in the corner.

He’d imagined that he might have forgotten her face, or that she might have changed so much he’d not recognise her. He’d worried that she might look too old, or have gained or lost loads of weight, or dyed her hair. He’d driven himself mad wondering whether he’d not know her face at all.

But it was silly to think he could forget.

She’s sat daintily in a corner booth, an indulgent array of food displayed in front of her as though she’s posing for an old painting and her bejewelled hands clasped carefully on the table. Her hair is just how he remembers it – dark and long, although now it’s swept back off her face in a coiffed, expensive style rather than flopping in front of her face in a heap of curls, catching in the corner of his mouth. She’s wearing a blouse – an actual, grown up blouse – in some shiny material that drapes over her shoulders delicately. She sniffs – a habit Harry remembers – and something ignites in his stomach with the force of a hurricane.

She’s here. She came.

She’s so beautiful. He’d almost forgotten.

His heart picks up so quickly he almost staggers, the clip of his heels audible against the flooring as he lurches to the side and nearly upends the coatrack.

Eighteen years of waiting, of searching, have led to this. Everything he’s always wanted to know – if she still smells the same, like lavender and smoke, if she still smiles with her mouth closed to hide her crooked tooth – is suddenly so close it blindsides him. He remembers the feel of her hands on his face, cold and bony and soft, stroking over his temples, scratching her nails over his eyebrows, and he has to resist the temptation to sob. She’s so close. Finally. So close.

Harry wipes his hands on his jeans, swallowing thickly as he stares. She’s blinking absently at the tablecloth, patient and still and calm. Calm. He needs to be calm.

The rest of the room melts back into view, like waking after fainting, as he coaxes himself to breathe. Cath Kidston kitsch-y tablecloths and doily curtains and actual teapots and towering plates of scones. A small birthday party to his left, in the window seat, all attention directed towards a little girl in a tiara. A waiter, standing right in front of him, asking if he’s okay.

He nods without really focussing on him, pointing to the back of the room – pointing to his mother – as he crosses the threshold. This isn’t the kind of place she likes, he thinks with an almost petulant zeal as his knees carry him forward numbly, working of their own accord. She likes underground bars with loud music and smoke in the air and men she described as ‘dangerous’ without the appropriate accompanying fear or disgust. 

When he was six, he thought that was bravery. 

His heartbeat is so thick he can feel it pressing against the skin of his throat. 

Stopping beside the table, he casts her in shadow as he hovers beside her, his hands clenching into fists and releasing. He smooths shaky hands down the front of his best shirt, the one he saved up for in a jar. 

She doesn’t even notice he’s there.

‘Hi,’ he says quietly, his breath catching when she looks up at him and blinks with a lack of recognition. ‘It’s, uh.’ His voice cracks and he coughs idiotically into his fist. ‘It’s me.’ 

Her eyes widen. ‘Kit? Is it you?’ She leaps to her feet so fast the crockery rattles against the tablecloth. ‘Is it you?’

Harry nods, swallowing again as she launches herself at him, kissing all over his face and clutching at his shoulders with tight fingers. 

She doesn’t smell the same. She doesn’t feel the same. She’s warm and sweet and she grips him too hard.

Something in him feels stiff.

‘It’s _you_ ,’ she breathes, pulling back and beaming at him – teeth and all. There’s a tiny bit of lipstick on her incisor that makes gelatine out of Harry’s lungs. ‘Oh, my darling boy. You’re so _beautiful_! I don’t believe it!’

‘So are you,’ Harry croaks.

‘I’d never recognise you! Look how big you are!’ She kisses his cheek again. Harry blinks away the wetness threatening at the corners of his eyes because when she pulls back, her own are dry. ‘My baby, look at you.’

She smiles so adoringly Harry’s head spins. He waves ineffectually at the seats. ‘Shall we sit down?’ he rasps. 

‘Yes, yes, let’s!’ She slips back into her seat with all the grace Harry would expect, still grinning at him like he’s Santa and Christmas has come early, her entire frame jittering with excitement in the manner of a small child. Harry just stares at her. ‘I don’t know what you like so I ordered a bit of everything. Scones and jam were your fave when you were little, do you remember? You loved all sweet things.’ Her smile widens even more and she leans forward on her elbows, closing the space between them. ‘I always think of you whenever I have a chocolate bar. Always. My darling boy, I could never stop that sweet tooth.’

Harry stares.

‘Do you want tea? I got tea _and_ coffee.’ She raises her eyebrows mischievously and begins fussing with the teapot. ‘I supposed you’re a big boy now who likes hot drinks. Remember you wouldn’t even have a hot chocolate? Once I took you to the bloody Café des Deux Moulins and you kicked up such a fuss – wouldn’t even try a sip of their coffee! I was so embarrassed! And you know what the French are like – all snotty. Just turned their bloody noses up, didn’t they? As if it’s _my_ fault you were a small child having a tantrum.’ She sniffs and pours lukewarm tea into a cup with a devastatingly steady hand. ‘My mum would have said you were too young for hot drinks, wouldn’t she? Old bag. Well, I never thought you were too young for anything. Had to let you _live_ , didn’t I? Had to show you the world! Do you remember?’

The crushing reminder of Harry’s heartbeat is present in his pulse, hot under his tongue, against his ears. He looks down at the cup of tea she pushes towards him like she’s presented him with a small alien.

‘Oh, you are so handsome,’ she sighs, and when Harry glances back up at her, the smile has dampened into something dreamy as opposed to manic, propping her chin up with the heel of her hand. ‘Not how I expected. All cheekbones and mouth. I used to look like that, once upon a time.’ She leans forward and tugs on the hair curling by his ear, not noticing when Harry flinches. ‘Are you growing it? That would look nice! Very 70s.’

Harry gulps. He manages to shrug, just once.

‘Oh, shut me up! Sorry, I don’t know a thing these days. All the kids are on Instantgram and whatever. No idea of what’s hot.’ She licks her lips contemplatively and waggles her eyebrows again. ‘I used to be hot once. Back when I had you. When we did our exploring.’

‘You still are,’ Harry says softly, a little hoarse. His heart feels like it’s bleeding. ‘You’re so beautiful, Mum.’

She tusks and fiddles ineffectually with her blouse. ‘Stop it,’ she says, but he hears the dormant, mollified smile in her voice. ‘Not a patch on all the girlfriends I expect you’ve had. Bet you’ve broken a lot of pretty hearts, looking like that.’ She sounds so proud Harry almost bursts into tears. He reaches for his teacup and brings it to his mouth with a trembling hand, not daring to look at her. ‘I want to hear all about it, sweetheart. Any young lady got you tied down?’

He shakes his head.

‘Oh, well there’s time for that. Probably best to have fun whilst you’re young, anyway.’ She smiles indulgently as Harry takes a long gulp and stares at her over the rim of his cup. ‘When I was your age I was already pregnant with you. Can you believe that? I was practically a baby!’ She shakes her head in disbelief, as though talking about a storyline on Corrie. ‘God, we lived in squalor, didn’t we? It was worse before you came along. Me and your dad. And the baby.’

‘Gemma,’ Harry clarifies.

‘Yeah. Tiny little flat up north somewhere dreadful. Doesn’t even bear thinking about.’ Another shake of her head. Her blow-dried hair ripples around her like a L’Oreal ad. 

Harry’s so dizzy, orange spots cloud his vision, blurring her at the edges.

‘Gemma had a baby,’ Harry mumbles, putting down his cup and wincing as it clatters against the saucer. ‘Did you know that?’

His mum’s smile tightens almost viscerally. ‘Did she really?’

Harry nods. ‘It was a – a one night thing. She doesn’t know the father. She’s been so amazingly strong about it, you wouldn’t – you’d have to see it to believe it.’ He pauses, wets his mouth, but his mum doesn’t say a word. ‘She’s called Joni. After Joni Mitchell.’

‘My favourite,’ she muses, nodding with her strange smile still plastered to her face. _She’s my favourite, too_ , Harry nearly says, his pulse thinning, but then she says, ‘Aw, well. That’s nice,’ and he doesn’t.

There’s a moment where Harry can only blink. 

‘Joni’s going to be six soon. Her birthday’s April 14th.’ He falters as she nods mechanically, still smiling. She’s so beautiful she could be on a billboard. It makes Harry sick. ‘That’s your granddaughter, Mum.’

She laughs brightly. ‘Oh, Kit. Don’t remind me of my age, it’s rude.’ She leans forward again and reaches a hand, brushing some hair from his face. ‘I want to hear about _you_ , my darling. What have you been up to?’

Harry holds her gaze. ‘In hiding,’ he says flatly. ‘For two years.’

It effectively breaks the spell. She jerks back with enough alarm that Harry should feel satisfied, her arm flinching as though she’d been burned, but instead he wants to scream. He wants her hand back in his hair so much it hurts, so much it makes him want to flip the table over.

She looks down at the lavish selection of food – scones and triangular sandwiches and croissants and French toast and a bowl of fruit salad – and when she looks up again, there’s something different in her face. She’s so composed it’s like someone’s reprogrammed her back to factory settings. Harry’s heart stops.

‘Mistakes were made –‘

‘He _stabbed_ me,’ Harry says, pinching at his thigh through his jeans. ‘He stabbed me, Mum.’

‘Could you not be so overdramatic,’ she says, her eyes narrowing, and at once Harry’s reminded – with the chilling sensation of being doused with ice – of the coldness he’d conveniently forgotten. The way she could always shut things down, pinch at his arm through his jumper, tell him to _be quiet, Kit, for Pete’s sake_ , and ignore him when he grabbed for her hand with tiny, desperate fingers. ‘I take you out for nice lunch and you do this? For the whole of London to hear!’

‘I didn’t –’ 

‘I’m not here to debate who’s right and wrong, here,’ she says smoothly, her voice clipped and sharp. ‘Both of you have clearly… misjudged things.’

Harry grapples for words fruitlessly, watching as she delicately picks at a scone and pops a chunk into her mouth. ‘What am I meant to have done wrong?’

She looks at him, unimpressed. ‘You’re an adult now, Kit. Don’t be silly.’ She swallows daintily and washes it down with a gulp of tea. Harry sits there dumbly, waiting, studying her with such ferocity he’s surprised she manages to avoid looking back at him. ‘You went to the coppers.’

Harry leans forward. ‘Mum,’ he says carefully. ‘He attacked me –’ 

‘Christopher,’ she says severely. ‘He _did not_ attack you.’

‘Fine. He sent his bloody cronies to stab me, then –’

‘—he didn’t understand the gravity of –‘

‘—he left me for dead in an alleyway. He told me you didn’t want me –‘

She rolls her eyes. ‘He’s an angry man, Kit, don’t be naïve –‘

‘—I came looking for you and he said you’d forgotten about me. He said you didn’t love me.’ Harry bites at his lower lip, watching as she falters. ‘I went everywhere for you, Mum. Gemma and Granny and Grandpa all told me to forget you, but I – I never gave up on you.’ 

She watches him, her chin wobbling a touch and breaking the façade. It has the same effect to Harry as watching an avalanche he reaches for her hand across the table. 

‘I went to uni, Mama. I did French so I could be like you. You always loved France, that’s why you took me there. You always used to watch _Chocolat_ in the living room, with all the curtains shut. I remember.’ 

He tries a shaky smile, squeezing her fingers. They’re slim and soft and bony against his, just as he remembers, but his hand dwarfs hers now, feels too sweaty and clumsy and imperfect against hers. 

‘I went to Paris on my year abroad. I wanted – I want to be a fashion photographer. I thought you’d love that.’ She nods, pressing her lips together as her brow creases. ‘I saved up all through uni to hire someone to find you. And I didn’t tell anyone, not even Gem, because I knew you –’

‘Because you’re my favourite,’ she breathes, pressing her nails into his palm, eyes like saucers. ‘My baby.’

His eyes flicker between hers desperately. ‘I came all the way to London and you weren’t there.’ His voice cracks down the middle. ‘It broke my heart, Mama.’

‘I was in the Maldives,’ she explains. ‘We have a house there.’

‘On your own?’ She shakes her head. ‘Who were you with?’

Her gaze drifts away. ‘Kit –’

He doesn’t let her pull her hand away. ‘Tell me.’

‘With Ivy. And Isadora.’

The dawn of knowledge rises – burning orange and cadmium and scarlet – in his chest, and tries to creep up to his brain. Harry suppresses it with a frown and a shake of his head. ‘Ivy an– Who are they?’

She presses her nails harder against his palm. ‘I always wanted a son. That’s all I ever wanted. They say boys love their mums so much –’

‘Mama, tell me –’

‘It might have been the PPD with Gemma, I don’t know, I just – I never really felt as though I was … connected with her, I didn’t know how to _feel_ like I was –‘

‘Are they –’

‘Your sisters, darling.’ She attempts a smile and seems to decide against it halfway through, and Harry just watches it die around their mouth. ‘Your sisters.’

Harry blinks at her, unmoving despite his chest concaving like a stack of cards. He feels the blood drain from his face the way they describe it in airport novels, although they never tell you that it pools around your heart, instead, overheating it, swelling it so much it feels like it might explode. 

His sisters. 

‘They’re fifteen and twelve. So sweet. They look – oh, they look _just_ like you.’ She strokes her thumb over the back of his palm. ‘I’ve always wanted you to meet them. They’d love a big brother, someone to – to look up to.’

‘You have children with that man,’ Harry clarifies slowly. His tongue feels like a brick.

She swallows. ‘He’s my husband, Kit, we’ve been married sixteen years –’

‘He _stabbed_ me!’ Harry hisses, tears stinging at his eyes so quickly it hurts. He snatches his hand away. ‘Your fucking sick-fuck husband got his fucking mates to fucking stab me when I came to find you!’

‘Kit –’

‘All for being your son! All for - for being a threat because I didn’t belong to him, as if I was ever that!’ His voice catches pathetically and he shakes his head as though he’ll be able to rattle the hurt out. He gives a bodily shudder and feels the tremor carry to his ribs, to his heart. ‘All I wanted was you. I would have – I’m scared of what I would have done if it meant I could have known you.’

‘Listen to me, sweetheart –’

‘He’s a fucking _gang lord_ , Mum, for fuck’s sake!’ He rubs a hand over his eyes, trying to subdue the panic flaring in his chest. ‘This isn’t one of your stupid little games anymore, you can’t do this again –’ 

‘What do you mean _again_?’

‘Do you think I’ve forgotten what you did?’

She holds her hands up in exasperation. ‘We went exploring –’ 

‘You _abducted_ me,’ Harry snaps. ‘You stole me from your parents and Gemma and you kept me away for six weeks.’

‘You can’t abduct your own bloody child,’ she says with a laugh, pressing her hands over her eyes disbelievingly. ‘It’s not like I had you locked it in a basement, for God’s sake, we went travelling –’ 

‘You took me away from people who could look after me while you did a fuck load of drugs –‘

‘Don’t exaggerate, Kit, I did a few on the road, it was the _nineties_ , I was young, I was grieving for your father –’ 

‘You used to leave me on my own. I was on my own in Paris for nearly two days once.’ He gulps. ‘I was six.’

She shakes her head, tearing up now. ‘You had fun,’ she says, voice low. ‘Don’t you dare tell me you didn’t. We had the best time of our lives out there. I think about it every day.’

Harry closes his eyes. He runs a hand over his face and takes a long, drawn out breath, feeling the steady rise of it in his chest. Filling him up. Ballooning him, pressing outward so hard he feels the strain of it against his chest, as though hoping to crack his spine. 

When he opens his eyes, she’s staring at him anxiously. Hopelessly. Like the whole world hangs on the edge of his tongue. 

She wasn’t well. He has to remember, because with a sharp pang of anger, he thinks of Zayn’s lovely family, who sat around the table with Harry and Zayn when they came home from the tattoo parlour holding hands and smiled and didn’t say a word. They ate mutton stew Yaser had made and spoke about _The X Factor_ and Wali and Safaa’s school exams and played Scrabble after the plates had been scraped and stowed into the dishwasher, over mugs of tea and an apple pie that Trisha had bought specially from Morrison’s. That’s what Harry could have had, all this time. But she wasn’t well.

‘We did, Mama,’ he says softly. ‘We did.’

The relief in her face is so much, Harry feels it under his ribs. ‘And now we’re back together again. You and me.’ She smiles almost shyly. ‘Maybe you’d like to – to go on holiday or something? It’s what’s right, isn’t it? I’m your family.’

‘And Ivy and Isadora,’ he says, tasting the words in his mouth and finding them sour. ‘And your lovely husband Daniel, who’s part of the UK’s biggest organised crime unit. Who said he’d kill me.’ He laughs and it sounds like acid. ‘What a sweet family.’

She sighs. ‘Kit, you’re being silly. We can work something out.’

‘I’ve had to change my name,’ he says, his voice shaking dangerously. ‘I’ve had to lie to everyone I love and promise to never see Gem or Granny or Grandpa or Joni again, whilst I’m Harry. I don’t even know if they’re _alive_ , Mum.’

‘Listen –’

‘He doesn’t want me,’ Harry goes on, speaking over her. Absently, he wonders whether he’s crying. ‘He doesn’t want someone else’s son around you. He doesn’t want you to have – to have anything that isn’t his, anything he can’t control. He said you’d never even mentioned me once.’ He breaks off, trying to catch his breath but he can’t. ‘I came to find you in your massive fuck off Islington mansion and he – he told me things Mama, he wanted to scare me. He told me all about the gang –’ 

She closes her eyes. ‘Listen –’ 

‘He told me what he’s done. That he’s – he’s hurt people.’ His voice breaks again and he has to swallow a sob. ‘And then when I left he sent some men to stab me in an alleyway. I was lying on the ground bleeding and they told me if I told the police – if I ever came back for you – they’d kill me.’

‘Kit, darling, I know all this –’ 

‘But I’m still here, aren’t I?’ he chokes out, blinking at her through the blurry film of tears, reaching out for her hand and grasping at nothing. ‘I just wanted to see you so much. I’ve waited for seventeen years. I told the police because I – I wanted to save you. I only care about you. I don’t care if he kills me.’

‘I wouldn’t let him kill you, sweetheart,’ she says soothingly, reaching out an arm to pat his head, but he knows, somehow, that it’s not true. ‘He says these things, sometimes –’

‘He has killed people, Mum,’ Harry whispers, tasting salt on his own mouth. ‘The police told me they’ve been trying to break the organisation for more than four decades. Wives of his brothers have gone to prison, Mama, I can’t –’

‘Don’t panic,’ she says, rubbing her thumb over his cheek. ‘You’re with me now. It’s okay.’

Harry closes his eyes. It’s everything he’s always wanted. It’s somehow not nearly, not even close to, enough. 

‘And what about you? And –’ He hesitates. ‘My sisters.’

She smiles minutely. ‘They’re at boarding school in France. I live very well, my darling. I’m a good mum now.’ 

After everything – that’s the bit that really breaks Harry’s heart, smacks over it like a whip. He remembers taking pills after he was discharged from hospital, the jagged site of the wound on his hip still weeping, bound by bandages, and being prescribed codeine. He couldn’t keep it down, he kept being sick, so they told him to cut it into quarters and stuff it into bread. That cut into a pill – it didn’t so much as fragment into bits of shrapnel as smash, disintegrate, splatter all over the table like blue-tinged sherbet. That’s what his heart feels like, now. A powder so fine, it’ll slip through his fingers the day he eventually tries to mend it, bring it back together when all this is over. 

‘He saved me, you know. Daniel. When they – the police – found you and I, they took you away from me and I – I was in such a state. I’d lost everything. And he found me and took me in and I’ve lived so well ever since.’ She beams at him. ‘I have everything I’d ever want, now. I couldn’t ask for anything better.’

Harry breathes in harshly through his nose, bites so hard at his lip he feels it tear. ‘He gets this money through hurting people, Mum.’ 

She sniffs, lifts her chin. ‘Sometimes life’s unfair, darling. We have a choice whether or not to see the things we don’t want to see –’

‘But –’ 

‘You do it too, I imagine.’ She strokes her thumb over his eyebrow. ‘You block out everything you don’t like because it makes things easier. You keep yourself safe. That’s the way we have to choose to exist, otherwise it’s too hard. Don’t you?’ She smiles gently as Harry gazes back at her and feels his stomach drop below the floor. ‘I know you do. You’re my baby.’ She taps at his forehead with her fake nails. ‘You’re just like me.’

 

-

 

They eat the scones. Harry has to excuse himself to vomit halfway through and comes back pale and clammy, his heart jackhammering at the thought she might have left. But she’s still there, tucked into that little private booth in the corner chatting amiably to the waiter who refers to her as Mrs Adams and asks after ‘the wonderful Daniel’, and all of it twists Harry’s insides into some perverted house of fun, everything flashing neon and toppling upside down.

He slips back into his seat and looks at the crumbling remainder of his scone, wondering whether the waiter will tell Daniel he’s been here. Wondering when he might die, after all.

‘Are you enjoying your lunch, darling?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘You look like you could use a few good meals,’ she says, faux-bossy, depositing more treats onto his plate. ‘What are they feeding you on your little farm?’

Harry decides to ignore that.

‘I was wondering how you found me,’ he asks after the waiter has given an awkward half-bow and wandered off. He sits back in his seat and eyes her wearily as she tears the crust off a smoked salmon sandwich.

‘Oh – that!’ She claps her hands together in delight; Harry stares at her emotionlessly. ‘It happened quite by chance, actually! It’s a wonderful story.’ She chews carefully on a corner of crust. ‘Dan had a boy working for him for a few years – really gorgeous, not that that’s of any consequence. Shy, really and it’s not like I get involved in what they all natter about in Dan’s study, I try and stay out of the way. But he was nice.’ She shudders a little and shakes her head in disapproval. ‘Some of them aren’t friendly – real thugs, you know. Some seem a little drugged up, a little whacko. Missing –’ She drops her voice, ‘—limbs and what have you. Fingers. Eyes. Disgusting.’

Harry wills his already jumpy stomach into submission. ‘Anyway –’ 

‘Yes sorry. So this lovely boy, he always used to come and chat to me in the kitchen. He bought me flowers for my birthday, once. Such a nice lad.’ 

She smiles brightly, and all at once, Harry knows. He knows. He presses the fingers of one hand over his mouth. He knows.

‘Then all of a sudden he was gone. That happens a lot, you see – Dan and his brothers get rid of people. I don’t ask questions. But then just before Christmas I got a phone call, and he tells me he went on holiday to the country and found you!’ 

She beams like a child and there’s bile in Harry’s throat that doesn’t go away when he swallows. He feels drugged as he stares at her, lights pulsing at the corner of his eyes, her eyes and lips melting on her face.

‘They’re all a little… preoccupied with you. Dan and his – his friends.’ She licks her lips delicately. ‘You mustn’t take that personally, sweetheart, it’s just that – it’s just that there was a bit of trouble after you told the police you’d been attacked. There was a court hearing and – and an inquiry and fines and so on. Our house got searched. Nothing _too_ awful, but it’s certainly been inconvenient. A couple of Dan’s friends are on trial now, too. As a result. But you mustn’t feel bad.’

Harry wags his head in a nod and reaches for some water, spilling half of it down his front as he goes to take a sip. His brain is whirring like a traction engine, remembering what Seb told him years ago. _In situations like this, with organised crime and networks of hundreds of people, we don’t go after small offences. Non-fatal violence and petty thievery and drug abuse._

_No - we wait. We infiltrate the network and gather information and we wait for a slip up – a real slip up. A chance for a load of them to be exposed, all at once, for something with real impetus. Identity fraud. Money laundering, theft and tax avoidance in excess of five figures. Sex trafficking. Child abuse. Severe, continued and premeditated perversion of the court of justice._

_Murder._

‘Well, this lovely boy – he is so lovely, Kit, just like you – he asked if I’d like to see you. He said he wouldn’t tell Dan he’d found you if I’d prefer to see you first, and I – well I hadn’t thought I would ever see you again! And here you are!’ She clasps her hands together and smiles radiantly. ‘I told you, didn’t I? I’m looking after you.’

Harry blinks dazedly. None of it makes sense – this boy apparently just waltzing from the organisation and coming back, meeting Harry’s mum with no consequence, choosing to go behind Dan’s back even though he knew there was an ongoing witch hunt for Harry.

All Harry did was look for his mum and stumble upon this empire, this underground world he’s only ever known as existing in movies and on the news, and he was nearly killed. He can’t imagine what they’d do to someone who deliberately turned their back, who worked against the collective, who orchestrated this meeting without somebody finding out.

Unless they did find out.

Unless they knew all along.

He’s struck with the sudden sensation of being watched; a prickle at the back of his neck, an icy slither down his spine.

It’s all a trap.

‘I’m gonna go now, Mama,’ he says, ignoring the fissure in his heart when her face crumbles. 

‘Oh, do you have to? I thought we might go to the pictures –’

‘We can’t go to the pictures,’ Harry says stiffly. Her puckered expression moulds into a frown.

‘Why not? You used to like –’ 

Harry lets out a halting sound of annoyance. She’s always been like this: childish, petulant, frustratingly innocent. Closing her eyes to block out the monsters of responsibility and running like they’d never catch up with her in the end. Even as a child, Harry knew that. Even then.

‘I need to go now.’

‘Kit Kat, please –’

Against his better judgment, he has to say something. It pulls itself up his throat and jammers like a litany in his head, right against his temples: _where were you? where were you?_

‘You never looked for me,’ Harry croaks as he stands, hair curling over his cheek as he looks down at her. ‘I’ve spent all of my life looking for you. Waiting for you. And you never once came for me.’

‘But you’re here now,’ she says with a beaming smile, as though that’s the point.

Harry presses his lips together, takes a deep breath through his nose, and nods.

‘I’ll see you soon, Mama,’ he says, bending to press his lips to the curve of her forehead. For a moment he allows himself to stay there, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly it hurts in his temples, breathing her in.

No lavender. No smoke. Just expensive perfume like twenty-thousand other women in London.

Like anyone in the world.

He turns away.

‘Kit, darling, you forgot your bag!’

Harry swallows the lump in his throat. ‘That’s yours. That’s your money.’

‘What money?’ 

He turns on his heel to look at her, drinking in the blank look on his face. ‘The money you asked me to look after,’ he says slowly. ‘In the hospital, two years ago. You left it for me.’

She frowns. ‘Oh no, darling, that wasn’t from me. I think you’re confused.’

Harry curls up his hands, feeling the slide of slick against his palms. ‘But you – you said when I saw you again I should bring it.’

‘No, that was Zayn!’ She shakes her head, smiling fondly, like he’s being endearingly stupid. ‘He wrote the note.’

His fist curls against the back of the chair, anchoring himself. The only thing in focus is the rucksack, the thing that’s haunted him for two years. The only thing that’s kept him going. 

His whole body snaps rigid – the hair on the back of his neck jumps to attention, his fingers twitch like someone’s pinched his nerves. He shakes his head, sure he misheard her, but there’s no use because he knows – _has known_ , this whole time. 

His brain suggests images of Zayn beside him, naked and dog-tired, a greasy sheen on his sweaty forehead and a light in his eyes that Harry’s never been the subject of before, telling him they’re meant to be.

There’s a shriek in the corner as a guest at the birthday party appears to break a plate. Harry breathes out. He breathes in. He breathes out again.

‘Bye, Mama.’

He leaves knowing he’ll never see her again. He pauses in the doorway for one last look, but she’s not looking at him – she’s smiling at the waiter again. 

‘Thanks for coming, Mr Kit,’ a waitress says, grinning at him, and it’s funny –

Harry never once mentioned his name.

 

-

 

The air stinks of tar.

They’re relaying the road outside, slathering black, treacle-thick liquid across the road as it vomits out the back of a truck. It’s holding up all the traffic. A car horn blares every few seconds.

Harry’s head is spinning. It’s spinning so much he can’t walk in a straight line. He sees a mother snatch her child close, holding him against her knees and out of his path as though he’s some kind of delinquent, and he starts to gag. 

There’s nothing left in his stomach. Nothing else can come out.

He hunches over with his hands on his knees, retching into thin air, stomach convulsing. All that happens is his mouth becomes disgustingly wet, so much so he has to spit into the gutter over and over, knees trembling. 

Everything appears through a new filter, now; astounding, unbelievable clarity, as though the atmosphere of the whole universe has been wiped clear. He sees the dust in the air, feels it as it gets sucked through his mouth and clangs down like staples into his lungs. 

He walks aimlessly, barely seeing, until he finds a newsagents. He has no idea where he is or how to get back to Niall, but at this point he can’t bring himself to care. Every single face in the crowd seems to leer at him, swooping close and then pulling back like a pinprick in a wide-angle lens and he knows he looks crazed, wide eyed and sweaty, his mouth gaping open like a war wound. The smell of tar buffets against his face like a boxing glove. He decides it’s best if he tries his hardest not to breathe.

‘How – how much are cigarettes?’ he asks the newsagent, his own voice surprising him. He sounds wrecked.

‘What kind?’

‘Don’t care.’ The newsagent rolls his eyes and reaches for a packet in the cabinet. ‘Need a lighter too. Please.’

It’s funny that he scrambles for change considering he has fifty grand in the bag on his back. He laughs about it, quite loudly, and the newsagent stares at him like he’s deranged. It’s quite possible he is. He laughs about that too.

Outside, it’s so bright he feels like he’s high. He smacks right into a man outside the shop in a nice, sleet grey suit and pink tie and laughs as he says sorry, grinning like he’s just won the lottery. The man smiles back at him and Harry considers kissing him.

He smokes four cigarettes in a row, walking to nowhere, and manages to vomit bile into a skip. 

When he lifts his head up, he catches his reflection in a car window – hair crazy, eyes wild, mouth wet and severe. He looks younger than he’s seen in a long time and he marvels at it, the way the sun twists behind his head like a halo. 

_You’re going to die._

He shrugs his rucksack off his shoulder and drops it to his feet, locating his phone inside. The letter is still there, folded carefully, Kit Kat written on the envelope. 

Zayn wrote that.

Zayn did everything. 

Everything is colourless, energy siphoning from the folds of his skin like he’s bleeding, and with every heave of his overworked heart he feels that start to bleed, too, splintering down the middle like a crack in solid oak, like the spidery tells of china that’s been smashed and superglued back together.

‘UKPPS,’ the lady on the end of the phone chimes, far too cheerful. ‘Hello, who’s calling?’

‘Hello,’ Harry mumbles, clinging to the skip, ‘hello, I need – I need help.’

‘Slow down a minute, please,’ she says, even though he wasn’t speaking quickly whatsoever. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s uh…’ He breaks off, rubbing a hand over his mouth. ‘It’s Kit. Kit Watson.’

The rest of the conversation passes in a blur, a smudge of sound that Harry doesn’t understand. He tilts his head back to look at the sky, fingers curved like iron around the edge of the skip, and although he hears himself panicking, spewing Zayn’s name with all the vitriol it deserves, he feels nothing. 

There’s dirt against his palms, creeping under his nails. The sun is beginning to bleed. 

It almost doesn’t surprise him when a hand curls around his shoulder and yanks him so hard he drops his phone, tugs and tugs until Harry’s stumbling backwards on his heels, not even bothering to cry out. Solid brick bashes against his shoulder blade just as a thick shadow cuts through his vision, creates a line of darkness that none of the passers-by will ever peer towards. This alley might as well be the other side of the world to them, scuttling past with phones glued to their ears, eyes cast down. Harry shrinks back against the wall, not even the nag of curiosity, the stab of fear, letting him peek at the blurred figure stood behind him, hand still curled around his arm.

‘Harry,’ they say, over the dull sounds of city life, over the clamour of the afternoon, and Harry’s withered heart jumps so ecstatically, he feels like he might retch again. ‘Haz, it’s me.’

With every ounce of strength he has, Harry pushes him back with his elbows, which isn’t much but must take him off guard because he lets go with a yelp and staggers backwards, hitting the opposite wall with a _thud._

Harry turns, trembling from his fingers with an energy that catches, multiplies, becomes seismic by the time it reaches his heart.

‘Fuck you,’ Harry spits. He actually does spit, right at Zayn’s feet. ‘Fuck you, you fucking –’ 

Zayn stares at him, terrified, his back still against the wall. ‘Haz, listen to me –’

‘Don’t call me that!’

Zayn blinks, nods, shakes his head. ‘Okay. Okay. Should I – Kit? Is that –?’

‘I could fucking _kill you_ ,’ Harry says through gritted teeth, desperately trying to ensure his voice sounds cutting but the betrayal bleeds into it, turns it from red to blue. ‘I could – I’m – _Jesus_ , Zayn! Fucking hell –’

Zayn’s mouth falters. ‘I’m sorry –’

‘No you’re not!’ Harry shouts, pushing him back when Zayn starts towards him. ‘You’ve lied to me about everything!’

‘No,’ Zayn says, almost breathless in his sincerity, and the hurt in his voice is enough to send Harry’s head spinning, ‘I promise, I haven’t –’

‘Christ, clearly you fucking _have_ , Zayn!’ 

Zayn blinks wildly, eyes like saucers, and tries another step forward. ‘Listen,’ he says, voice cracking, ‘As much as this drama is appropriate, we don’t have time. Please listen.’

Harry twists away. His heart is lurching from his throat to the depths of his stomach, catapulting around his chest, and he has to press his knuckles to the corners of his eye sockets to calm down.

He doesn’t want to listen. He squares his shoulders, his back to Zayn, but even so, his stomach clenches, breath drawing in as though he’s about to blow out all the candles on his birthday cake, as though he’s about to jump off a cliff. He can already feel the _whoosh!_ in his ears, the stinging slap against his skin.

 _Time._ That’s always what it comes down to. Time and the distinct lack of it, time like a whole new world stretched out in front of him, separated by a glass wall that he can’t ever break through without tearing his arms to shreds.

‘Are they gonna kill me?’ he asks quietly. It feels sharp against the insides of his mouth, like chewing glass. 

Like always, Zayn’s hand curves around his elbow, as though grounding him to the earth. ‘I won’t let them. I promise. Please believe me.’

‘I – I don’t know –’

‘They don’t know I’m here with you,’ Zayn carries on. It’s clear he’s trying his best to be soothing, to stay calm, but the hand that presses against Harry’s waist to turn him around is shaking and damp, and when Harry lets himself be shifted, he finds that Zayn’s mouth is quivering too, a slice of shaky pink on a too-pale face, a tear of bleeding amber sunlight in the sky. ‘They can’t know, okay? I’m not meant to be here.’

Harry’s heartbeat feels too quick, too hard. ‘Where are you meant to be?’

Zayn gulps. ‘Finding you,’ he admits, still clinging to him. ‘But this is what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna go back out onto the street and we’re going to pretend one of the other boys found you, okay? And you need to go with him. Don’t kick up a fuss.’

‘How will I know?’

‘They’ll – you’ll know. Don’t worry.’ Zayn squeezes his waist, and a horrible, aching sound escapes Harry’s mouth, twists through the fragile air between them. ‘Don’t be scared. I’m gonna – it’s gonna be okay.’

Harry doesn’t reply, and the sudden silence is engulfing, terrifying, so much that he has to pull away. He tugs at his hair, tries to keep himself calm, but the harder he tries, the more time bleeds, warps, and he finds that he’s barely breathing.

‘How am I meant to believe you?’ he says, voice cracking. He can’t even bear to look at him. ‘You – you fucking – fuck, Zayn, you lied –’

‘I know, but you have to –’

‘No I don’t!’ Harry snaps. ‘You have no right to tell me what to fucking do! You have no fucking right!’

Zayn looks delirious with panic, swaying on the spot. ‘I know, just – just please. For the last time. And then you can –’ He breaks off with an anguished twist of his mouth, throat bobbing. ‘And then you can never see me again. That’s – that’s fine. I just need you to do this. I’m trying to –’

‘To what? To set me up? To kill me?’

‘No!’ Zayn says, angry now. He grasps at his own face, tugs at his beard. Just two days ago, they were playing Scrabble with his family, holding hands under the table. Just two days ago, Zayn rolled his eyes as his sisters forced Harry to gape his mouth and widen his eyes for every Snapchat filter – all of which, Harry considered an astonishing marvel of technology – and stood in the corner watching them, a flush to his cheeks that Harry didn’t quite understand.

Now he’s flushing again, and it’s awful.

He wants terribly, even now, to bridge the gap between them, to wrap his arms around Zayn because he looks so frightened and angry and tearful, and it makes him so mad at himself he knocks the edge of his fist against the wall. ‘Are you saying Liam and my mum are lying? I know what you’ve done, you’ve made me – you’ve made me sick, you’ve made me scared of my own fucking shadow, you made me scared of _Niall_ , as if he would ever –’

‘ _Kit_ ,’ Zayn says sharply, with such force that Harry’s voice shrivels in his throat. ‘We don’t have time. You can choose to listen to me, or you can –’ He breaks off with a mangled swallow that Harry hears rupture the space between them. ‘Or you can choose not to. But what else do you have?’ 

_What else do you have?_

‘I need to take the rucksack,’ Zayn says gently, and Harry only notices then that it’s at Zayn’s feet. ‘And I promise I’m not giving it to them. You have t– please believe me. Please. I’m doing – I’m making this right for you.’

Harry’s vibrating. He can hear a child laughing in the distance, a song being blasted from a car radio, a dull, ineffectual police siren. Miles and miles away.

‘Zayn,’ he croaks, heartfelt, and he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say but he imagines it might sound an awful lot like _please._

‘I promise you,’ Zayn says, still so wobbly, reaching for his neck. His thumb finds Harry’s jaw and stays there, presses with pulse-quickening certainty. ‘I promise you.’

Harry closes his eyes. He feels the leakage between his ears – consciousness oozing, the melting away of his clarity in tune with the frenzy of his heartbeat. Niall will probably be done with his screentest by now, sitting outside chewing on a Tesco sandwich as he waits for Harry, like they promised.

Bess will be waiting for him, outside his bedroom door.

Zayn presses his palm over Harry’s heart, now, and he must be able to feel how hard it’s going, a pain in his chest he’s never had a name for until now. ‘Okay?’ Zayn prompts softly.

His palm presses flatter, coaxing him. He must be able to feel it beating. He must be able to feel it breaking, right there, for him. 

‘I knew it was you all along,’ he says, and he thought he might feel a thrill when Zayn’s hand drops away, but instead he’s left with an ache that rattles in his empty chest like a sickness, presses against his heart like disease.

‘Okay?’ asks Zayn again, and this time, his voice is flat.

Harry nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk of violence and (used very loosely) abduction! Vomiting! Also generally just a sad parent/child dynamic that some might find uncomfortable! x


	10. (TEN) Mario Testino, 2014, Marlon Teixeria – Towel Series #30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the big one for warnings! Please read them in the end notes if you need to!

Kit runs the fingernail of his index finger against the crease of his thumbnail, back and forth, harder and harder. It’s a steadying action, solidifying, something he used to do during his exams or waiting for his name to be called in the doctor’s surgery. Now, he’s lying on an unfamiliar bed in the dark, his shirt rucked up above his navel from where he was shoved against the bed, and it still manages to calm him, despite everything.

He’s been here for hours. He’s bored.

He keeps scratching at his nail as he peels the blindfold off. The light is unpleasant, burns against his eyelids even as it weeps feebly through drawn curtains, and he pushes himself away from the crumpled duvet and stands up with wobbly knees. It’s too dark to decipher the teasing shapes in the room – picture frames, a wardrobe, maybe an old bureau. He doesn’t bother trying to work it out; he crosses the room the door, illuminated by a rectangle of light leaking from the next room, and reaches for the doorknob, not allowing time for hesitation.

If he hesitates, he’ll get scared. And if he gets scared, it’s over.

He doesn’t expect it to actually open, and retracts his hand with a hiss, as though it’s burning.

Seven – no, eight – faces turn to him.

Some of them are in suits, looking tall and devastatingly expensive. Some are in slouchy jackets of leather and denim. One of them is Zayn, leaning against what appears to be a busted television, his eyes huge and unnervingly calm in extreme contrast to the Zayn he saw down the alleyway earlier, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It almost seems as though he’s asking Kit some sort of question as he hovers in the bedroom threshold, his eyebrows quirking up, but Kit’s attention is drawn elsewhere before he can contemplate how on earth to answer. 

‘You’re awake!’ Dan points out, smiling despite the absence of any joy in the room. He stands from the couch and stretches a ringed hand towards Kit, who looks back at him blankly.

Somehow, he imagined that Dan might have changed. That he may have lost an eye or a leg like everyone else who involves themselves in his line of work. Two years have weathered him slightly – a deeper indent to the permanent crease between his eyebrows, a sagging of his jaw – but other than that, he’s still just as tall and commanding, still equipped with a beer belly and thick thighs. His smile twitches impatiently when Kit doesn’t move. 

‘We were just talking about you, actually,’ he says, pinching at the tops of his smart pinstriped trousers as he sits down, crossing his legs. Kit casts a quick glance back at Zayn – he’s smoking lazily, one arm crossed over his stomach. ‘How have you been, my boy?’

‘Um,’ Kit says, finding the question confusing. He scans the room again and meets the eye of the man who drove him here: he’s glaring at him, now, the blitheness from earlier vanished. ‘Okay.’

Dan’s wax-stiff smile melts into something more genuine. ‘ _Okay_! He’s okay! Thank God.’ He laughs, which prompts many of the others to giggle too. In the corner, Zayn does not. ‘That’s good, Kit. That’s really good.’

Kit swallows. He slices his thumb over that edge of skin.

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Um. Yeah,’ he says, thinking it might be somehow the wrong answer to admit he didn’t sleep at all.

‘How rude of me not to introduce you to everyone. Boys, this is my _step-son_.’ Dan relishes the word. One of the boys near the back – wearing a denim jacket, smoking what looks like a spliff – sniggers. ‘This is Porky, Ed, Stiffy, Jacko, Caspar, Spike.’ He waves a hand around lazily. ‘And of course, you know my dear friend Zayn.’

There’s a louder laugh, a laugh with a mean edge. Kit stands up a bit straighter. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the door to the room has been barricaded with a heavy looking chest of drawers, weights balanced on top.

How very overdramatic. 

‘I’m so sorry that we couldn’t meet at my place,’ Dan goes on, gazing at Kit with frightening severity. ‘I know how much you liked it last time. This place is a bit of a shithole, I know, but Zayn thought it’d be more private.’

_Zayn._

Kit doesn’t dare to look at him.

He lets his gaze rest instead on the crackling flames tucked inside the fireplace, wondering whether he’s going to be trussed up and burned at the stake in ritualistic fashion. He squints, recognising a smile that makes his heart jump, a glint of teeth that has his spit drying up.

On the mantelpiece are a collection of picture frames, all faces Kit knows. 

Georgie. Trisha. Qais. Yaser. 

He feels the edge of his thumb begin to bleed. 

He’s been blindfolded and brought to die at Zayn’s house, of all places. His heart burns hotter than the fire, scorching the already charred remains of his insides to black, pathetic dust.

‘So, Kit.’ Dan leans back farther in his armchair, chin titled back. ‘I have a question, if that’s all right. Do come closer.’

Boldly, Kit does as he’s told, walking straight over to the fire. His skin has pimpled in just his shirt, but the warmth is less than comforting; it feels like it’s searing him, pulling against even the thin hairs of his knuckles, even the strings of his eyelashes in the seedy light. All at once, he’s so dehydrated his head spins, and he turns his back on the room, staring straight at Trisha like she might clamber from the picture frame and wrap her arms around him.

‘How was your lunch with your darling mother, then?’

There’s a beat of silence as Kit grinds his teeth and tries to keep calm, keep the rising heat of his blood at bay. He dips his head forward, letting the glow of the fire lick over his face in intermittent strokes of blazing heat.

‘Okay,’ he says.

‘Okay? Is that the only fucking word you know?’

‘Good. Fine.’

‘ _Good, fine_.’ Dan mimics. ‘Well, good to hear. You want to know how my day’s been?’ Kit doesn’t bother to answer. ‘Absolutely fucking _shit_. You know whose fault that is?’

‘The tax-man?’ Kit supplies, too dejected to inject sarcasm and instead going for pleasantly dumb.

‘Try again.’

‘Oooh, I don’t –’

‘Don’t be fucking smart with me!’ He lets that hang in the air like a lead balloon, and then, with so much force that half the room audibly jumps, ‘ _Turn around when I’m fucking talking to you!_ ’

Kit turns. 

All anger drains from him too quickly, like there’s a hole in his ankle that’s leaking blood. He feels faint with fear.

Dan’s not playing nice anymore. He stands now, and Kit watches as the nearest men to him cower backwards. ‘Where is my money?’

Kit falters, licks his lips. ‘Um –’

‘Are you fucking deaf? Where is my _fucking money_?’

‘I – I don’t –’

Kit’s unable to finish his sentence. Dan twists a hand behind himself and produces a gun, one of those heavy black ones from movies, one that fits in his palm like the shears fit into Kit’s, moulding against his skin with the ease that only comes with experience. It’s so overdramatic Kit can only blink, almost confused, but it’s very real as Dan holds it by his side, fingers flexing.

‘Don’t play stupid with me, you little shit,’ Dan hisses, flecks of split flying from his mouth to land on the carpet. His hands are so steady. Kit’s whole body quivers like his fist is wrapped around an electric fence. ‘Where’s my fifty-K?’

‘I saw he had it,’ the man in the grey suit and pink tie, the one who drove him here, pipes up from behind Dan’s shoulder. ‘He was carrying it when he went in the newsagents, I saw he –’ 

‘Shut up, Jacko,’ someone else mutters.

‘Look, kid,’ Dan says, ignoring Jacko entirely. ‘I know you’re not stupid, okay? So don’t play dumb with me. You’re more turned on than some of these fucking halfwits.’ He cocks his head to motion to the others in the room. ‘I would’ve been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But the moment I met you and saw…’ His eyes trail down Kit’s body. ‘Fucking wet. Wetter than a fucking dishtowel. And you know what wet means?’

‘Scared,’ chorus a few of the boys behind him. Kit feels close to vomiting. Spit swims in his mouth, and his throat is so tight he can’t swallow.

‘And you know what scared means?’

‘A grass!’

‘Yeah. A fucking grass.’ His lips quirk up dangerously. ‘And you proved me right, didn’t you? Last time. Went straight to the coppers.’

Kit’s mouth grapples around words that take a while to come out. ‘I was – I was hurt, I was in hospital –’

‘I don’t take lightly to grasses, Kit. Two of our men are inside because of you. Our _friends._ ’

‘You stabbed me –’

‘Tough fucking shit!’ Dan snaps, the sharp intonation of his East End accent making Kit flinch. ‘You think if I went to hospital for every paper cut I got I’d be standing here? You don’t become a man like me and my brothers by whining like a fucking Nancy every time you need a plaster.’ 

There’s a theatrical _click!_ as he disengages the safety catch on his gun.

‘Now you’ve been a good, stupid boy and looked after my money for two years just as I wanted. This was a chance to prove yourself, to show you understand how to play the fucking game. And look what you’ve done.’ He shakes his head, almost disappointed. ‘I could have let you win. I could have let you _in_.’ He raises the gun. ‘And now Jacko tells me you _lost_ my money –’

‘I didn’t lose it!’ Kit gasps, so fast it burns in his lungs. ‘It’s – it’s by a skip, in Hammersm-’

‘We already looked hours ago you fucking dumb –’ 

‘Fine!’ Kit says. It’s loud – it reverberates in the room, slices across the flickering shadows the fire is pasting to the walls, over the broken TV and the shitty couch and the closed curtains. ‘I lied. I know where it is.’

In the silence that follows, Kit questions all of his life choices thus far, and why on earth his body allows for idiocy to so often take over what is otherwise a fully functioning brain. He spares a glance at Zayn and finds him alarmed, standing up straight now, his mouth a tight line and his big unblinking eyes focussed solely on Dan and his gun.

Which, when Kit looks back, has been lowered.

Every muscle in his body relaxes, so much so that he slumps back against the mantelpiece. He feels a bead of sweat snake down his cheek like a tear.

‘You’ve hidden the money?’

This had been the direction in which Kit was headed, although he’s glad he’s not the first to voice it. ‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘He – he can’t have!’ Jacko splutters from the back of the room. ‘I had eyes on him the whole time!’

‘I think we’ve established you didn’t,’ another boy sneers, elbowing him. ‘You went for a fucking fag, and a piss –’

‘N– no, he couldn’t have hidden the money in that time –’

‘You ain’t got no say in this Jacko you fucking idiot, I should have gone –’

‘ _You?_ You don’t know how to tie your fucking shoelaces, Spike –’

‘You didn’t even notice he didn’t have it in the car!’

‘Don’t point the finger at me when you –’

There’s a bang so loud somebody actually screams. Kit stumbles backwards, nearly toppling into the open mouth of the fire if it weren’t for the edge of the mantelpiece. It catches sharply against his cheek, tears a line through his skin so abruptly he almost doesn’t feel it as he rights himself, knees wobbling. He only notices when he feels blood on his neck, on the collar of his shirt. 

Somebody’s splayed out on the floor, moaning. There’s blood speckled on the wallpaper like someone’s tripped carrying a bowl of tomato soup. 

That’s all Kit can think about. Tomato soup.

The Warhol posters of it, _Campbell’s_. Lines and lines and lines of tomato soup.

‘What did I tell you boys about shutting the fuck up,’ Dan says flatly, the gun dangling from his lax fingers. Kit imagined it would be smoking, like in the movies – it’s not.

‘Are you alright, Jacko?’ a calm voice asks – it’s Zayn, of course it is, still in the corner like an innocent bystander, like this isn’t all his fault. Blood drips from Kit’s cheek into his panicked, panting mouth. 

‘It’s just his arm,’ the boy next to him – Spike – says, but his voice is small. 

‘You shouldn’t have done that, Dan,’ Zayn says, still quiet, still just as unruffled. 

‘Do you think for five minutes you could hold back from telling me what I should and shouldn’t fucking do, Zayn?’ Dan snaps, and Kit half expects Dan to turn the gun on him. 

He doesn’t. The hot feeling that floods him is relief in the highest form, almost religious in the way it makes his head spin, makes his knees give just for a moment but long enough that he has to steady himself against the mantelpiece. 

Dan turns back to him and takes a step closer, gun stiff in his hand. ‘Where is the money then, son?’

Kit’s heart is beating so fast he can hear it in his ears. His mouth tastes of sweat and blood; he spits on the carpet. ‘Take me there and you’ll get it.’

Dan eyes him. ‘Do you think –’

‘I’ll take him,’ Zayn says from his dark little corner, and it makes Kit’s heart twist inside out. There’s no undertone to his voice that Kit can grasp and twist, nothing he can interpret. There’s nothing.

Zayn catches Kit’s gaze, holds it, the ring of brown devastatingly unreadable. Kit runs his tongue over the blood coating his teeth; now the iron tastes sweet.

His heart burns like a housefire; his ribs strain like windowpanes, ready to smash from the pressure.

‘What, so you two can drive off into the sunset and bum each other?’ one of the boys snipes. There’s a resounding laughter, and Kit’s cheeks burn.

He looks away from Zayn.

‘Shut up, Stiffy,’ Zayn snaps, exposing a gap in his cool exterior, a hole in the ozone layer of calm.

‘This isn’t Brokeback Mountain, Paki, you don’t get a happy ending.’

Kit blinks. From the floor, Jacko moans. Zayn says nothing.

Dan is still looking at him.

‘Tell me you ain’t as stupid as I think you are,’ he says, almost musingly. ‘You know what we was gonna do with you and that money, right?’

Kit presses the back of his palm to his bleeding cheek. It stings but he doesn’t dare flinch.

‘Shop you out,’ Dan answers for him. ‘Take twenty-five back and get the police on you for that last twenty-five.’ He narrows his eyes appraisingly. ‘Have you ever heard a better plan than that? Hide your stolen cash with the fucking protected witness. Last place the coppers look, ain’t it? Guarantee they come back by preying on their weakness – in your case, being a wet little mummy’s boy.’ He laughs at the look of pure abhorrence on Kit’s face. ‘Looks bad for you, dunnit? Laundering, fraud, obstruction of justice. Banged up for life. Bye bye Kit.’ He steps forward, closing in. ‘Guess who thought of this genius plan, hmm?’

Kit’s tongue feels like a slap of concrete. Dan keeps walking forward, but there’s nowhere for Kit to go – all that’s behind him is the fire, hot and snapping, scorching the hairs on Kit’s arms. His stomach twists like a wet rag being squeezed out.

‘Guess, Kit. Guess.’

‘I don’t –’

‘Guess.’

‘I – I can’t –’

‘It was your own Romeo over there. Paki.’ He’s so close Kit can feel his breath, sharp like tic tacs, cold like metal. ‘He thinks you’ve got it in you. I was of the opinion that I should just kill you straight away, for losing the money. But he said you could handle it.’ He tilts his head to the side. ‘That you’re worth more alive. Are you?’

He waits for Kit to answer. There’s a crackle and a spark from the fire shoots up, burns a hole in Kit’s t-shirt. He flinches; blood splatters from the cut on his cheek to his sleeve.

Tomato soup.

‘Because if not,’ Dan says slowly, ‘I’ll kill you. Right now. And who would remember you?’

Kit’s eyes screw shut.

It echoes like a foghorn in his brain, rattles between his ears so loudly he winces. _Who would remember you?_

‘You’ll be gone,’ Dan whispers. ‘And nobody would care.’

The pain in Kit’s chest flares, burns with the truth. 

‘You see? I know how this goes,’ says Dan. ‘Bye bye Kit. That’s the end of it.’

And then –

There’s another bang. Louder, this time – so loud the walls shake.

The sound of the front door being battered. Kit’s eyes fly open.

And then a voice, from the other side of the wall, shouting, ‘Armed police!’

Another: ‘Armed police!’

A third: ‘Nobody move!’

Dan’s eyes widen so much Kit could count the dim slithers of the veins, criss-crossing through the white like red little skiers on a slope. He doesn’t breathe once.

‘Who called the fucking coppers?’ he asks quietly, measuredly, and it’s the most dangerous Kit has ever heard his voice. Nobody answers.

‘ARMED POLICE!’ a voice outside shrieks. They bash against the barricaded door.

‘Get me out,’ Kit exhales, gripping Dan’s shirt with his bloodied hand. He knows with astounding clarity that if he stays here he’ll get shot. He can see it in Dan’s face, in the way his fingers tighten against the gun. ‘Get me out and I’ll get you that money. I’ll go with Zayn. I’ll go and get it.’

Dan snarls, shoves Kit back so hard his shoulders slap against the mantelpiece with a crack. ‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ he hisses. ‘You think I was ever gonna let you out of my sight? You’re dead.’ He spits on Kit’s chest. ‘Fucking _dead_.’

‘If they find him here you’ll be done for kidnapping,’ someone pipes up, talking so fast Kit’s understanding lags a second behind. ‘Conspiring to murder. He’ll grass.’

‘He won’t be alive to fucking grass,’ Dan snaps. He lifts his gun to Kit’s temple, the other grasping for his neck. ‘I’m gonna do him now, the little shit.’

‘We’ll all go down –’

‘The coppers are right outside, Dan, you can’t –’

‘Jacko should take him,’ Spike chimes in. ‘He’s been shot, it looks bad.’

Zayn strides forward with more authority than Kit would ever have expected, standing in the centre of the room. ‘No,’ he says.

Dan’s grip tightens around Kit’s neck, cutting off the supply of air. He tries to gasp and all he feels is a scratching along his windpipe, like someone’s raking their nails down it from the inside, and he kicks out a leg hard enough that it hurts his toes when it collides with Dan’s ankle.

He doesn’t even flinch.

Around them, the room erupts with fear.

‘Ed, prop up that fucking chest of drawers, put the couch –’

‘Don’t let him leave with Jacko,’ Zayn adds, voice rising. Kit’s vision starts to spot, his lungs not so much as burning as scorching, like acid, like lava, in his empty chest, begging for Dan to let go. He lifts his hands to tug Dan’s fingers away, but the energy is tapping out of his bones incrementally and they barely lift to his waist before flopping down to his sides, eyes rolling back in his head.

‘Let Jacko him to the flat out in Brixton, they won’t know –’

‘Let’s just kill him now, for fuck’s sake –’

‘We could gag him, put him in the –’

‘No!’ Zayn shouts, over the sound of Jacko clambering to his feet, blood soaking through his suit, and the screams of the police outside. ‘Listen to me, you can’t –’

‘Who made you in charge, Paki?’

‘Dan, tell him –’

The police ram the door so hard the hinges break; it now hangs suspended, propped up by the chest of drawers and the couch and the weights. The shouts outside are louder – there must be at least ten of them, all armed, all forcing their way in. 

Just like that, like switching off a television – Kit’s vision cuts out.

And then somehow, he finds he’s slumped on the floor.

‘Kit,’ Zayn says. Kit blinks, ears ringing like they did after he went to Leeds festival and accidentally ended up in a mosh pit for some awful screamo band, eyes scarily unfocussed as though staring through jar. He keeps blinking and it doesn’t go away; he finds that he’s not breathing at all.

‘Have you lost your goddamned fucking mind?’ Dan roars, shaking Zayn, but he’s not listening.

The venom in his heart singes when he sees the outlined figure of Zayn stumble towards him. In the swatches of colour Kit is able to see, smudges of brown and black and pink, his eyes seem to take up all of his face, lunular, scarily huge. Frightened. ‘Kit, listen to me, you have to breathe –’ 

There’s a sound of surprise from the back of the room. ‘What the _fuck_ , Zayn?’

‘Did he just – did he –?’

‘– breathe, please, don’t –’

‘ARMED POLICE! NOBODY MOVE!’

Kit rests heavily against the floor. Nobody is listening to anyone, and he’s still not breathing because when he tries, all that happens is a singed sort of agony tearing through his chest like someone’s hacked it open with a chainsaw. His brain feels like it’s bleeding and melting all over his eyes, and the carpet is excruciatingly rough under his cheek, and, wait, maybe there is actual blood in his eyes, dripping from the cut on his cheek to matte against his eyelashes, and his shoulder hurts horribly from the impact with the mantelpiece. He hears a scream, loud and broken, the worst pain he’s ever heard, and it knocks a breath into him that’s so huge it causes an involuntarily bodily spasm of pain, bursting from his chest like it does when he comes and snaking all the way down to his feet. His limbs snap so hard he hears another crunch in his shoulder.

Dirty light bursts into the room with the same effect of opening a door against a flood – in the red blobs he can see, he can work out that everyone flinches against the low, six-o-clock dusk, as though drowning in it, but there’s no time to waste trying to breathe, as what feels like a hundred black shapes melt into the room like tar, sticky and glucose and shouting and shoving and grabbing at everything in sight, turning the room into one long blur of red, black, gold. 

Kit clutches at the carpet before anyone can reach for him, eyes drifting closed.

It feels like going to sleep when you’re dog-tired. He feels his consciousness float off gently, as though not really a part of him; he watches it leave until it’s just a speck of light in the distance, the farthest star in the sky. 

And it’s silent. 

 

-

 

Everything’s so bright!

With a trembling, bloodied hand, Kit reaches for his face. Everything is so bright, and something’s playing on the radio, or maybe it’s just the song stuck in his head. Robbie Williams.

‘Oh God,’ Kit moans as they swerve around the corner. It’s too bright. There are about thousand lights on. His heart feels like it’s in his stomach, stuffed in there with the same thickness and discomfort as a pair of socks sucked up into a hoover. ‘I’m gonna be sick.’

Someone passes him a bedpan. He stares at it uselessly.

Through blood and sweat, Kit looks at them. There are two paramedics blinking at him, both indiscernible from the other. He’s shaking tremendously, covered in his own blood, flopped like a corpse against a cot that he’s been strapped into.

‘Am I alive?’ he croaks stupidly.

‘Yes, Kit,’ they answer together, with matching smiles. ‘Try to rest your throat,’ one of them says, just as the other closes in and bleats, ‘You’re nearly there now. You’re going to be fine.’

Everything’s so bright! There are sirens in the distance, but nothing close by. 

Kit feels as though he should protest; he’s clearly not alive and rather in some shitty paradigm shift widescreen HD cinematic sequence on his way to the pearly gates. God decided Kit’s life flashing before his eyes might be slightly cliché, so he’s mixed things up a bit with a visual representation of the spiritual journey to heaven instead. There’s no way he’s actually in the back of an ambulance that smells distinctly of vomit and antiseptic, with Tweedledee and Tweedledum dressed as paramedics, and Robbie Williams is on the radio.

_Hurry up and die_ , he tells himself after retching hopelessly until black stuff dribbles between his teeth. That hurts too much – rips up his throat, aches and pulses dreadfully in his stomach – for it to be conjured by his imagination, but that can be the only explanation for this shit. _Just hurry up. Let’s get this over with. Don’t be melodramatic in death, for the love of God._

But he is. He grits his teeth and the ambulance drives on, ignoring Kit’s silent protests, ignoring the very immediate pain in his neck and his shoulder and his cheek and his stomach. They drive on, and the paramedics fuss about with him, poking and prodding and shifting and moving him, shoving things in his arms, and Kit feels exponentially brave for not having a complete meltdown and deciding instead to just stare at the ceiling.

He has one presiding thought: Everything’s so bright!

All the considerations he’s had about bravery in his life seem to bubble under his skin like an infection. His mum taking him away when he was little, the two of them going on an adventure to Paris hand in hand. _We don’t need anyone else,_ she’d said to him. _Just the two of us now. We’ve got to be brave._

Maybe this is real bravery. Driving on. Staring down the barrel of a gun. Saying _no, listen to me, you have to breathe._

Maybe he’ll never know.

_no, listen to me, you have to breathe. no, listen to me, you have to breathe. nolistentomeyouhavetobreathe._

Robbie Williams plays on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: Graphic violence, racist language, strangulation, blood, pain!


	11. (ELEVEN) Steven Klein, 2016, #BalmainArmy

Fractured shoulder. Stitches on his cheek. Soft tissue bruising around his neck.

Anxiety?

Memory loss?

When was the last time you –?

_You what?_

How are you with needles?

He feels the pull of the drip under his skin whenever he shifts in bed, trying to get comfy. _Friends_ runs endlessly on the TV, and he watches blankly until he catches himself muttering along like a zombie. It’s so mindless he scares himself. 

He changes to _Challenge_ and tucks into the fruit basket his granny brought. It’s a word game.

Do you remember what happened before –?

Have you had trouble with –?

Are you going to be okay when –?

Nescient: lacking knowledge; ignorant.

Temerarious: rash or reckless.

Perfidious: deceitful and untrustworthy.

He turns off the TV and closes his eyes.

 

-

 

It’s a room of the hospital he’s never been to before. Two floors down from his ward, unsettlingly quiet, empty. He’s in his pyjamas – they’re all in suits. A plate of jammy dodgers sits between the four of them awkwardly, placed on the coffee table like an ornament.

There’s a prolonged, awkward buzz of the tape. It seems to burn between Harry’s eyebrows. 

‘GOC interview of protected witness Christopher Watson, conducted at St Mary’s Hospital by DI Shah and DS Williams, in the presence of…’

Amy leans forward. ‘Amy Montgomery, appointed solicitor.’

DI Shah nods, his lips pressed into a thin line, and says nothing more. Harry presses his nails into the arm of the chair.

‘Before we proceed, could you just confirm a few things for the tape?’ DS Williams says to Harry, a kind edge to her voice despite the fact she’s not smiling. Harry blinks at her and nods.

‘Yes or no – your name is Christopher Edward Watson?’

Harry nods.

‘For the tape, may you endeavour to answer aloud, please?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your birthday is February 1st 1994, making you at this time 23 years of age. Correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have for the last two years and five months been under witness protection, new given identity Harry Styles. Correct?’

‘Yes.’

She shuffles some papers in an important sort of way. ‘Thank you. For the purposes of this interview, what would you prefer to be called?’ 

Harry stares at her. At his side, Amy shuffles in her seat. 

DI Shah laces his fingers together. ‘Would you prefer us to refer to you as Christopher or Kit or Harry?’

There’s a long silence. Harry’s vision feels blurry, like he’s staring through fogged glass. He reaches for the plastic cup of water and his hand shakes.

‘Uh – Kit. Please.’

DI Shah nods and presses his lips together again, holding Kit’s gaze. ‘I’ll bring you up to speed, shall I, Kit?’

Kit nods.

‘Daniel Adams has now been arrested on suspicion of numerous serious offences, including obstruction of justice, GBH, and conspiracy to murder. Many of his conspirators are also in custody. Is this man known to you?’

‘Yes,’ Kit says, licking his lips.

‘How so?’

He glances at Amy. They know all of this; he did this interview the first time around, when he was stabbed. They have thousands of files on this man. Google told Kit things about Dan’s family that sounded too good to be true, like something out of a Bond movie. 

Amy stares back at him impassively. ‘He’s – he’s one of the main guys in the – the Islington thing. The Islington crime syndicate.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s married to my mum.’

‘Right. What else?’ 

‘He orchestrated the –’

‘The attack?’ DI Shah finishes for him. Kit nods. ‘You’re referring to the attack on August 29th two years ago, during which you received stab wounds to the abdomen and threats were made upon your life, following which you were placed under witness protection?’

Kit nods.

‘For the purposes of the tape –’

‘Yes,’ Kit says.

‘Right,’ DI Shah says again, looking down at his papers. ‘What leads you to believe that Daniel was responsible for orchestrating this attack?’

Kit blinks. ‘You told me.’

‘ _I_ told you?’

‘The police. The police told me.’

‘Is that all?’

‘And…’ He closes his eyes briefly. ‘And when I was being attacked –’

‘By the man you later identified as Darnell Clark?’

‘Yes, yes, he told me that it was a warning. And if I came back to London, or told the cops, they’d kill me. He’d kill me.’

DI Shah nods. 

‘Why are you asking me all of this if you keep finishing my sentences? You know all the answers already.’

They don’t respond. Instead, DS Williams slides a picture across the table towards him.

‘For the tape, Document 1. Kit, do you recognise this?’

Kit stares at the CCTV picture of himself, exiting the tube station with Niall the morning of the screentest, wearing his rucksack. ‘That’s me. And my bag.’

‘What’s in the bag?’

They all wait as Kit swallows hesitantly. _You know what’s in the fucking bag._ ‘Money.’

‘How much money?’

‘Fi – fifty grand.’

‘And can you confirm that you admit this is your bag?’

DI Shah sits back in his chair. Kit feels panic coil hotly in his stomach.

‘Yes.’

‘Kit Watson, the evidence we've acquired by interviewing multiple suspects pertains to the fact that you acquired, used, or had possession of criminal property, namely funds to the value of fifty thousand pounds that were received by Daniel Adams as part of a serial drug trafficking and on-going, organised criminal activity. Do you accept –’

‘I didn’t use it,’ Kit says hurriedly, pressing his palms to the table now. ‘I kept it under my floorboards, I didn’t –’

‘Do you accept that you purposefully concealed this money from the police and the UKPPS –’

‘I didn’t know it was illegal money,’ Kit gasps, looking between them incredulously and then back at Amy, whose eyebrows are beginning to furrow. ‘I didn’t – I thought it was from my mum, I thought –’

‘Did your mother personally give you this money, Kit?’

‘No, she… I was left it. In my hospital room.’ He hears his voice break. ‘With a note, telling me to – to hide it. To keep it.’

‘This was after the attempt on your life in August two years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you believed the anonymous note?’

Kit looks at his hands. ‘I thought it was from my mum,’ he says, almost whispering. ‘I b– I would have believed anything, if I thought it was from her.’ 

There’s another silence. Beside him, Amy tenses, and Kit feels his heart sink very, very low. 

‘Am I in trouble?’ he asks, voice small.

‘What we’re having trouble understanding, Kit,’ DS Williams says slowly, staring straight at him with such intensity that Kit’s face burns, ‘is why you would keep money that you must have assumed was associated with illegality for two years, without informing anyone, and then bring it back to London – a place you were advised to not return by the police and UKPPS – on the very same day Daniel finds you.’

Kit’s hands leave prints on the table, wobbly sweat outlines, like the chalk they draw around corpses. ‘I was – my mum wrote me a letter. She told me to bring it back.’

A muscle in DI Shah’s jaw flinches. ‘We’ve already spoken to your mother, Kit, she says she was unaware that there was money –’

‘They did it to frame me,’ Kit says, far too loudly, and Amy’s knee jerks under the table. ‘It was all planned. Mum had nothing to do with it. Dan had someone put that money outside my hospital room knowing that I would think it was Mum’s, and – and knowing that I would come back to find her. They want you to believe I’m implicated. That’s what they want.’

He hopes none of them notice that his voice wobbles over _Someone_. 

DI Shah raises his eyebrows. ‘Are you?’

Kit gapes. 

‘They tried to _kill me_ –’ 

‘It’s your mother’s husband,’ DI Shah says, shrugging. ‘It’s happened before. Keep it in the family.’

‘He’s not my family.’

‘And yet, you hid his money.’

‘I didn’t know it was his money,’ Kit says through gritted teeth. 

DS Williams cocks her head to the side in a caricature of thought. ‘Why would your mother need to hide fifty grand from her husband, Kit?’

‘Maybe because he’s a fucking psycho! I don’t know –’ 

‘Why would you believe that your mother would hide the money with you, the son she hadn’t seen in fifteen years, just after your discovery that she was embroiled in the largest organised gang in the UK?’

Hearing it back like that makes the panic burn hotter. It makes no sense.

_He’s been so stupid._

‘I don’t know,’ he mumbles, pressing his hands to his face.

‘For the tape, may you speak lou–’

‘I don’t know!’ His nails press into the jagged border of his hairline, and for a moment, he can’t breathe, like he’s just spotted a child step off the pavement in the line of oncoming traffic. ‘I thought I was special,’ he admits, and more than anything, it’s admitting it to himself. ‘I thought she trusted me.’

That’s all it boils down to, in the end. Wanting to be special so badly he’ll trust anyone, even if their Machiavellian intentions are so obvious he has to lie to himself to ignore them. 

Ignore the fact that through everything, he’s always being used.

‘Let’s discuss Zayn’s role, Kit,’ says DS Williams.

Kit’s fingers drop from his face so fast they hurt as they hit the table.

_Zayn’s role._

It presses like a punch against his heart.

DI Shah squints at him. ‘What exactly was your relationship?’

‘I don’t see the relevance of this?’ Amy pipes up sharply. ‘This has nothing to do with the allegation that my client was somehow involved in criminal activity. Which you know very well he is not, as the gang unit orchestrated this entire thing from start to finish.’ 

‘It just saves us having to do another interview,’ DI Shah says, holding his hands up with a nonchalance that makes Kit want to smack him. ‘Kit, if you please. What was the nature of your relationship?’

‘So he’s a policeman?’ Kit asks, unable to hide the desperation as his gaze slides between the pair of them. Saying it aloud pricks at his tongue, presses hot admittance against his tearducts. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

DI Shah purses his lips. ‘In our questioning this morning, Zayn denied all knowledge of where this rucksack containing the money is.’

Kit is undeterred. ‘But – wait, is he police? I’m confused, hang on –’

‘In fact, nobody seems to know where the rucksack is at all. Which is funny, as it has fifty grand of stolen money in it.’

‘Answer me,’ Kit says through gritted teeth, ‘who is Zayn?’

‘And it’s funny that it plays out like that, isn’t it. The money has gone missing, Kit, and nobody knows where it is. Not you, not Daniel or any of his boys, not your mother, and not Zayn –’

‘Who is –’ 

‘Who is an undercover officer, yes.’

Yes. 

Yes, yes, yes. 

Kit doesn’t know whether he should be relieved, but he is, so relieved it hurts. He’s barely listening as DI Shah keeps prattling on, instead repeating the words over and over again in his head. 

_Un-der co-ver_. It matches his heartbeat, twists around his bones like poison ivy and seeps like venom into his bloodstream.

_Yes, yes, yes._

‘He was – his intelligence was indisputably _crucial_ to this operation, which is why full disclosure is necessary from you at this time.’ DI Shah clears his throat and eyes Kit with all the warmth and trust of cold steel, so unyielding it makes Kit’s cheeks sting. ‘What was the nature of your relationship?’

Kit looks at Amy pleadingly, traces the lines by her eyes from smiling, the creases in her skin from too many afternoons in the sun. Now, she’s frowning as Kit leans in, whispers in her ear whether he has to answer. She shakes her head.

DS Williams sips her water. DI Shah stares Kit down, crossing and uncrossing his fingers. Kit stares back nervously and says nothing.

‘Kit, may I be candid with you?’ DI Shah says, smoothing his fingertips over one eyebrow. ‘This interview is perfunctory. We have to conduct it for the paperwork. Nobody truly believes that you were seriously somehow involved with Daniel Adams, after what happened to you.’ 

Kit stares at him, unmoved. DI Shah stares back.

‘In truth, this entire case has been somewhat of a cock-up. Okay?’ He tries a shark-like smile, the skin under his perfectly sheered beard flexing unnervingly. ‘You were used as a pawn by the undercover unit. I’m sure you’re aware of that by now. You were deliberately intimidated by our undercover officer for months and shepherded back to London, into the arms of Daniel Adams, for the sake of the operation. This was done without coordination with UKPPS, who are responsible for your safety, and is the only operation of its kind in UK history. We didn’t have any template to work off, we didn’t have any point of comparison. We saw an opportunity, with you, and we had to take it. Your rights as a witness under protection have been compromised, unfortunately, for the sake of the greater good. The bigger picture. Are you aware of that, now?’

Kit’s lip twitches. He says nothing.

DI Shah rubs slow fingers around his mouth. ‘Sometimes, the powers that be are forced to make decisions – compromises, shall we say – in the interest of the greater good. Sometimes, these decisions aren’t necessarily what you and the general public may understand as legal. But the fact is, we make the law. And these decisions are never made lightly. I’m sure you can understand that.’ He smiles again, teeth white and pointy and condescending. ‘In this case, we needed a situation – carefully controlled and manipulated by us, of course – in order to catch our targets at an opportune, high-risk moment.’ He pinches at his eyebrow almost thoughtfully. ‘This operation has been underway for half a century, Kit. Long before you went looking for your mother. Long before you could even begin to comprehend how many crimes we’ve had to let go amiss in order to strike at just the right moment. Long before you were even born. You were compromised, but –’ He shrugs and sighs helplessly, like they’re all in this together, like they’ve all been on some jolly camping holiday and had just finished pitching tents when the heavens opened. Not like this is Kit’s life he’s talking about, as something to be toyed with. ‘Sometimes, compromises must be made.’

‘We’re sure you can understand,’ DS Williams adds helpfully.

‘As I’ve said, so high-risk was this strategy that we were unable to even let your friend Seb at UKPPS know. Nobody at witness protection was aware of your unwitting involvement in our operation. Intelligence of this operation was contained within only the most senior of personnel, in an effort to avoid any kind of – of mistake for what we believed was the first real chance we had of catching them out in many years. Nobody could know. And in the sake of public interest, nobody can know.’ His façade slips a little now, as he coughs and lets his gaze flicker from Kit’s momentarily. ‘So, as I’m sure you can understand, your little slip up with the money doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things. However, Malik’s misconduct –’ 

‘His misconduct seems to be just as immoral as everything else you’ve done,’ Kit snaps, surprising himself with it. ‘And he did it, didn’t he? You got what you wanted. You executed your little _compromise_ and it’s all over.’ Kit mirrors his shrug with his good shoulder, but it’s tight and heavy and collapses down again with a thudding, jarring lack of sentiment. ‘Have a fucking party.’

‘So you see that you were used,’ DI Shah clips back, and it strikes Kit like a whip, splicing over his heart. His bravado stutters for a moment, a pain in his chest so potent he has to cough. He watches an aeroplane break up the sky, smearing white in its wake. ‘You were used by Daniel and your mother to hide that money, and you were used by Malik for the purpose of the operation. Who is loyal to you, Kit, whilst you remain so stubbornly devoted to everyone else?’ Kit blinks hard, his mouth wobbling. It takes sudden effort to draw breath. ‘We’d like you cooperate with us and disclose the nature of your relationship with Malik so he can be disciplined as necessary for his professional misconduct.’

The hum of the ceiling is so loud in the silence that follows. Kit half-believes he can feel it in the tiny joints of his fingers, in the bracket over his heart. He turns to stare out of the window, at the towering structures of London, grey slate and steel, scraping the sky. He imagines the blue velvet sheeting of the atmosphere being pierced, penetrated, by tiny men in suits in their tall skyscrapers, making daily deals and operations and _compromises_ , passing verdicts on strangers that can’t have their say. The price of the latest mobile phone contract. The mortgage allowance. The high-risk strategy of using someone, manipulating them, taking chances on the flimsy reality of someone’s whole entire life. 

‘I think we’ve proved I’m a pretty terrible judge of character, haven’t we, DI Shah?’ Kit looks back at him, and adds, without feeling, ‘I’m terribly sorry this little mishap is shitting all over your glory parade. Perhaps this is another of those things you’re going to decide isn’t in the public interest so you don’t look as negligent and incompetent as you apparently are.’

DI Shah lifts his chin. ‘If I may –’

‘You may not.’ Kit looks back out of the window. ‘Being silenced isn’t fun, is it?’ He presses his fingers against his stomach with bruising force, as though trying to ground himself. ‘You’ve used me for long enough, so no, you _may fucking not._ ’

‘Kit –’ 

‘I get that I don’t matter,’ Kit goes on with sharp impatience, ignoring him, ‘and that this whole thing is bigger than me, and that because of me, you’ve shut down a corner of this huge fucked up organisation, _yay_ , and you’re probably gonna go back to the station and eat some party rings and get your dick sucked and whatever. But I’m not gonna be fucking happy for you. I matter, all right? I matter to someone.’ He swallows, ears ringing with the echo of the words, _Who is loyal to you?_. ‘I am a – a person, actually. I do matter. I matter to me.’

Beside him, Amy sighs.

‘Do you have anything else to say at this time?’ DS Williams asks, but she’s already gathering her papers. Kit shakes his head. ‘For the tape, he gestures no.’

DI Shah stands, his finger hovering over the recorded. ‘Interview terminated.’

He ejects the tape and walks out without looking back. At least he has the courtesy to shut the door behind him. 

 

-

 

‘Can we practise?’

Niall looks up. He’s sat cross-legged at the foot of Kit’s bed, playing with the etch-a-sketch Joni brought him. His cheeks are red and blotchy; he says hospitals have always had that effect on him, ever since he went to visit his brother after an operation as a child and witnessed a man projectile vomiting with such force, it hit the opposite wall. Even now, he looks shifty whenever he shuffles through the ward, as though ready to duck and cover at any moment.

‘Practise what?’

‘What I'm gonna say.’

‘To who?’

Kit swallows. ‘My grandparents. And Gem.’

Niall sits up properly, foregoing the etch-a-sketch, and frowns. ‘But you've already – They’ve been here loads, haven’t they?’

‘I mean as a sorry.’ Kit licks his lips, ignoring the wobble of his breath. ‘As a sorry.’

There’s a pause. Niall scratches at his mottled cheeks and scans Kit’s face carefully. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay. So you – you're my granny. Sit here.’ He gestures to the chair at his side, currently housing Kit’s favourite jumper that has been festering in his childhood bedroom for two years and a bouquet sent from the Tomlinsons that he hasn’t yet asked for a vase for. Niall dumps them unceremoniously on the floor. ‘Gem's sat there, and Joni – maybe Joni's on my lap.’

‘Where's your grandpa?’

Kit coughs ineffectually. ‘He's in hospital. Another hospital. He's got emphysema.’

‘Oh,’ says Niall. There’s a moment, and then a trailing, ‘Is he...?’

‘I don't know.’ 

His gaze falters, dipping to the duvet bunched over his lap, and his breath sounds a bit mangled, rattling in his sore throat, until Niall saves him by asking, ‘What am I doing?’

‘Well, you're - you're making this face you used to make when I was talking shit when I was younger.’ He smiles lopsidedly; Niall smiles too, even laughs, and reaches out to squeeze Kit’s knee. ‘Your mouth's all – all tight. I used to call it your disapproving face. Trying not to shout. But I – but now I think maybe you were just listening, actually.’ He breaks off again, eyes lifting to the ceiling to compose himself. ‘Sorry.’

‘It's okay. What do you wanna say?’

Kit closes his eyes. ‘I – fuck, sorry.’ He gulps, clenches and unclenches his fists. ‘It’s just, I ...’

Niall squeezes his knee again. ‘Maybe it's okay for you to just be there,’ he suggests gently. ‘That’s all they want. You know?’ He pauses. ‘I think if I ever see my family again, I wouldn't need them to apologise. I think I'd just like them to be there.’

Kit looks at him. His face is smooth, eyes wide, and it’s so simple with him. It really is. Even Kit’s longwinded explanation about all of this, from the ride in the police car when he was six to the ride in the ambulance five days ago, was simple under the serene scrutiny of Niall’s accepting gaze. 

‘I did bad things, though, Niall,’ he mumbles, bottom lip wobbling. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I used to write letters to my mum, really long tragic essays in – in fucking gel pen. I always used the grapefruit cos she liked that. I used to make my grandpa go back to Woolworth’s to buy a whole new gel pen set whenever the grapefruit one ran out.’ He laughs wetly and swipes under his nose with the heel of his hand. ‘I kissed the paper and everything. And I gave them to my granny and she – well, she had no fucking clue, did she? She had no idea where my mum was. But she took the letters and lied and said she was sending them.’

Niall makes a comforting noise, shaking his head. ‘Sometimes people lie to make things –’

‘I found all of the letters a long time after I stopped writing,’ Kit says, voice thick. ‘Boxing Day, when I was seventeen. It was fucking chucking it down outside, I remember that. Everyone was watching _Corrie_ downstairs. And I found all of them, in a little box under their bed. The box was my great grandfather's. Do you know what I did?’

‘Kit –’

‘I took the box out to the garden and smashed it with a baseball bat.’ Kit fists at the sheet until he can see the lines of his bones under his skin. He’s trying so hard not to cry his throat burns. ‘And then I set it on fire. When I went back inside I was so cold, my arms were blue. Little wires for veins. Like a machine. I was – maybe I was programmed all wrong.’ He breathes slowly, in through his mouth and out through his nose. That’s wrong. He looks up and bites his teeth together in a smile. ‘You know what _you_ did?’

Niall’s mouth fumbles for something to say. ‘I –’

‘You made me tea and a turkey sandwich,’ Kit says, sniffing loudly. His smile becomes looser and Niall smiles too. ‘I tried to say sorry and you pretended not to hear me. And I still thought you weren't enough.’ He breaks off, voice tearing. ‘I'm so sorry.’

‘It's okay.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘It is, though. It is.’

Niall reaches for his hand. He doesn’t let go, not for a whole episode of _Pointless_ , not even when Emma the nurse comes in to check on Kit’s shoulder. He laughs when the nurse makes fun of Kit’s shitty etch-a-sketch drawings, and he gets all the answers wrong on _Pointless_ , answering Central African Republic or Rory McIlroy for virtually everything, and still, he doesn’t let go.

He just holds on, squeezing whenever Kit’s supposed to laugh and shaking it whenever Kit does. He laughs, and he holds on.

Emma pokes her head back around the curtain just as Niall switches over to _Come Dine With Me_. ‘The fam’s back,’ she says with a smile. ‘Not you, Niall. The other fam. Shall I send them in?’

‘Yeah, I’ll just be leaving,’ Niall says, answering for Kit. He stands up, stretches his back out, and kisses his forehead. ‘Everything all right?’

Biting his lip, Kit nods. ‘Yeah. Think so.’

‘Good luck, Kit Kat. You’re gonna smash it.’

Kit exhales shakily. ‘Hope so.’

‘Know so.’ He lets go of Kit’s hands and flexes his stiff fingers. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m gonna bring you some cake, that hospital slop looks like what you find in the barn after a night –’

Kit holds up a hand to stop him, eyes wide. ‘Cake.’

‘Yes.’

‘ _Cake_. Niall –’

Niall shakes his head. ‘Don’t.’

‘Did you – did it –?’

Niall chews his lower lip, running his teeth along it over and over, and Kit’s heart seizes hopelessly, before a small grin blooms like daylight at the corners of his mouth and he nods.

‘What!’ Kit gasps. ‘You got it? You _got_ it?!’

Niall nods again. ‘I got it.’

‘You didn’t!’ Kit tries to sit up and then winces when his shoulder protests. Niall pushes him back down. ‘Why have we been blabbering about me when you’re gonna be on the telly!’

‘Ace, init?’

Kit beams, punching Niall on the waist. ‘Fuck, Nialler! Shit. What’s _wrong_ with me?’

Niall rolls his eyes. ‘You nearly died.’

‘I didn’t nearly die –’ 

‘And yes, Paul Hollywood was beautiful. Still an arse, but beautiful.’

Kit laughs, head thrown back against the pillows, and Niall grins at him as he tugs on his coat.

‘God, you’re gonna be famous. Don’t you forget about me.’

‘Hey, hey, hey, hey,’ Niall deadpans, punching the air. ‘Course not, you nob.’

Kit presses his mangled cheek to the pillow and smiles, reaching out his fingers to press against Niall’s arm. ‘Lost boys forever, right?’

Niall smiles back gently. ‘Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe not so lost anymore.’ He squeezes Kit’s fingers. ‘Stay sweet, Kit Kat.’

The curtain ripples as he leaves, like the surface of a lake interrupted by rainfall, and even though he’s alone in it, for the first time in ages, Kit doesn’t feel like he’s drowning at all. 

 

-

 

They sit on a bench. A squirrel darts up and down a tree in front of them as a sharp, chemical pain loiters limply in Kit’s chest, dangling from his ribs like Christmas decorations left up too long.

Beside him, Zayn sneaks glances at him with furtive recklessness. Kit exploits the awkward silence, bounces his knee with poorly concealed tetchiness, and punishes him by not looking back once. He hasn’t met his gaze at all, not since he found Zayn sat outside his ward in his red Nike hoodie, waiting patiently curled up on the floor with a face like shattered glass. 

‘What meds are you on?’ Zayn asks eventually. 

Kit doesn’t reply.

‘They put me on morphine. I didn’t want it, though, it made me feel weird. Fuzzy. You feel that?’

Kit sniffs, stretches out his legs on the tarmac. It’s too cold and he’s starting to feel it in his bad shoulder. He readjusts his sling carefully, making sure to be delicate as he repositions his arm. Since the surgery, his fingers have turned red and swollen, and they twitch out of the sleeve of his jumper angrily at Kit’s readjustment.

‘I’m not supposed to be here with you,’ Zayn says, laughing breathily. ‘I have to go to an inquiry. Professional misconduct. I don’t know wh –’

‘Are you expecting me to feel sorry for you?’ Kit says coldly. There’s a childish, unhelpful silence, one that Zayn breathes into heavily and Kit doesn’t dare to face.

‘No,’ Zayn says quietly. ‘I just thought you might want to know.’

It’s cold. Under the coat draped over his shoulders, Kit shivers and waits for the squirrel to come back. The little square park is mostly empty, doused in pale, insipid light under a white sky. It’s cold. The drugs have made Kit feel numb to it, though. He presses the backs of his fingers to the bench, flattening his knuckles against the wood.

For a long time, they say nothing.

‘I just want to talk to you,’ Zayn says, his voice almost unbearably flimsy and tight. ‘Please. I want to tell you the truth –’

‘What truth?’ Kit snaps. ‘What truth?’

Finally, he looks over. Zayn blinks at him wordlessly, hands tucked into his sleeves like a child. His perfect face doesn’t have so much as a scratch on it.

‘The truth,’ Zayn repeats slowly, eyebrows drawing together as his eyes trace over Kit’s face, pausing on the plaster on his cheek. Niall said it made him look like Nelly. Zayn would have found that funny, not long ago. ‘I want you to understand why I did it.’

Kit snorts, and Zayn’s puckered eyebrows draw in even more, moulding from confusion to hurt.

‘You saw my cousin,’ Zayn says, a little desperately. His lips are chapped again, a maddening bit of dead skin poking up that Kit wants to bite. ‘You saw him. I never wanted this – I wanted to play the cello. That’s all I wanted. But I – I couldn’t sit by and let this shit happen, Kit. People are being killed, every day – I just – fuck, I just wanted to do _something_ –’

‘How is that the truth?’ Kit asks flatly. ‘What’s true about that?’

Zayn’s mouth twists. ‘Because – because it’s right there. It’s everywhere. And, mate, I speak three languages, I can throw a punch, I’m not scared of big white guys with guns. Why would I waste that, fucking around in an orchestra?’ He leans closer across the bench, presses his knee against Kit’s. ‘I know what the unit did was wrong, and I’m _so_ sorry, Kit. I’m so sorry.’ He presses his lips together and rubs them anxiously. ‘I – it was awful, having to scare you. Don’t think that we’re not all getting in trouble for this, even though it was a success. UKPPS are out for blood. But it – it was my _job_. Do you understand that? That wasn’t me, it was – I had to, how it was for the –’

‘The greater good. Yeah.’ Kit pulls away. ‘And that’s the truth, isn’t it? I don’t matter as much as everyone else.’

Zayn frowns, shakes his head. ‘No –’

‘Well, that’s the only fucking truth I know. The world is huge and shit and then you die.’ He snorts again, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Zayn’s face stays crumpled. ‘Some NHS psychiatrist tried to analyse me yesterday, tell me that I’m obviously gonna be fucked up forever because of my mum. Isn’t that just shit? You know, I’m not a – a product of stuff that’s happened to me. I never thought it before now, before you all pulled me apart, but I’d like to think that I have some say over who I am. I’m not a statistic. I’m not something all you wonderful Powerful People can manipulate whenever you like. You can’t tell me I’m special after proving that I’m not.’

Zayn’s breath feels far too warm against Kit’s cheek. ‘But you are. I – I mean that. You are to me –’ 

‘No!’ Kit says, so forcefully Zayn jumps. ‘Nothing’s special, all right Zayn? Get that into your fucking head.’

He realises belatedly that he’s standing. Zayn looks up at him, disconcerted. ‘But you said –’

‘Forget what I fucking said! The world is _broken_.’ He sniffs, if only to stop himself from screaming, and fists at his hair, tugging so hard his scalp burns. ‘I see it properly now. Sometimes it’s easy to mistake biology – adrenaline, hormones, all that shit – for enlightenment. It’s bollocks –’

Zayn gets to his feet too, shaking his head. ‘No –’

‘– and you can try and convince yourself that there’s fucking – bloody bullshit poetry in the stars or whatever, but there’s not, all right? We’re just drifting without purpose until we die –’

‘No, Kit –’

‘– and everyone who said any different can fuck off. What did Shakespeare say? My mum had it tattooed. Juliet said, _And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars_.’ His voice cracks. ‘Mum had that on her ribs. But who’s she even asking, though? Who’s doing the cutting? There’s nobody there. Nobody fucking listens.’

‘Kit –’

‘The only truth I know is that I don’t fucking matter at all. The sky’s made out of rocks and atoms and sciency shit I’ll never understand, and I don’t matter at all. So don’t tell me I do, Zayn. You proved that I don’t.’

He steps back, feet crunching against the gravel path, coat hitting the backs of his knees. Zayn looks at him like he’s gone mad, stumbling forward for every step Kit takes away until he’s caught up with him, walking backwards in front of him.

‘Do you not see?’ Zayn says frantically, hands twitching under his sleeves. ‘Sometimes stuff’s true even if it doesn’t belong to you. Words and – and stories, and whole other lives that run parallel to yours. Like you’re meant to be. That’s – that’s life. That’s beautiful. _You_ taught me that.’ His bottom lip quavers dreadfully, even when Kit stops walking and stares at him, breath caught in his throat. ‘So much is made up and everyone just goes along with it. Like – like money and time and – and boring monotony and everything you stepped away from when you were Harry. You were apart from it. And it’s so beautiful, Kit. I thought it was so beautiful in you.’

With a shaky hand, he reaches out. It’s only then that Kit realises his hand is bandaged, right up to the tips of his fingers. 

‘I read up on your man Camus.’ Zayn tries a tiny smile as his hand grazes Kit’s sleeve, and Kit feels it in his heart. ‘ _The sky will last longer than I_. It’s true for both of us. For everyone. It doesn’t make us less special. Do you get it?’ Kit’s breath trembles visibly in the air as Zayn closes the gap between them, and if there were ever a time that the universe should fold in on itself and the sky collapse and the ground twist into dust, it should be now. ‘I think I love you,’ Zayn murmurs. ‘That’s not meant to be an apology, I know I haven’t said sorry enough. But it’s not a sorry – it’s true. I think I do.’

Kit closes his eyes. The light against the back of his eyelids pulses in crimson blobs. ‘Zayn.’

‘We lied to each other.’

‘Yes.’

‘I had to.’

‘Yes.’

‘And so did you.’

‘Yes.’

‘I love you.’

Kit swallows. ‘Yes.’

Zayn’s so close now, Kit can feel the heat of his mouth. ‘You love me?’

‘Yes.’

He exhales so thinly that it barely even ruptures the space between them. ‘Did we make a mistake?’

Kit opens his eyes, dips his head. Zayn’s hands are hovering by Kit’s waist.

‘What happened to your hands?’

There’s a long pause. ‘The fire. Dan pushed me.’

Kit looks up at him. He looks so unfairly beautiful, hair fluttering against his unshaven cheeks in the breeze, eyebrows drawn, mouth slack. ‘The – that scream was you?’

Zayn doesn’t bother to reply. He presses his bandaged hand to Kit’s good arm, gazing at him imploringly with wet, sincere eyes. ‘I’m gonna get fired, Kit, and I don’t care.’ He takes a long broken breath and then laughs, shaking his head in bewilderment. ‘Fuck it. Just – fuck it.’ His hands flap against his sides in defeat. ‘I’d tear the whole sky apart for you, you know that?’ His voice falters with the bite of honesty, thickening audibly. ‘I don’t care what name you have. I don’t care what’s true.’

Kit swallows. Time flares and then pulls, warps in front of them, and it’s so solid, so real, but there’s nothing they can do about it at all. ‘I do, though.’ 

Zayn sniffs loudly, blinking at him with wet eyes, and then nods bravely, lips tightening. ‘Okay. As long as you know.’

‘I think I need to try and – and be a real person for a bit,’ Kit says, dipping his head. ‘I want to at least feel like I belong to myself. I want to find truth in something.’ He squeezes his eyes shut, wondering why it’s so easy to feel this pain in his chest, to feel it soak through him so unapologetically, and to stand on a ground that’s not collapsing around them. Why it’s so easy for the rest of the world to keep turning without him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘If that’s what you need,’ Zayn says, and when Kit glances up at him, he’s still nodding. He tries a gentle smile that seems more of a grimace, and it’s like he can’t bear to hold Kit’s gaze for long as he roots around in his pockets and withdraws a napkin, holding it out to Kit using the tips of his fingers, as though worried they might touch. ‘Just – just go here. Promise me.’

There’s a code and an address on the napkin. _Locker 389 @ Paddington Station_. 3827. ‘Why?’

‘I can’t say. Just go there.’

Kit stares at him, breath catching, and he knows.

‘ _Zayn_ –’

‘You deserve that money. For fuck’s sake, you should be the one to have it, but for the love of God, don’t let anyone know.’ Zayn sniffs again, swipes at his nose carelessly. ‘Okay?’ he says, avoiding eye contact. 

‘Okay,’ says Kit softly. He’s trying so hard not to cry his throat stings. ‘Keep looking up, Zayn.’

Zayn wipes his face with his elbow and smiles with almost palpable effort, lips wobbling. He goes to point at the sky with a bandaged hand, lifting it level with his chin – all he can do is raise a stiff, plaster-cast fist. There’s a stringy, awkward second in which Kit blinks at him and thinks _this boy, my boy_ , and his heart burns like it’s thawing, and then they laugh, wet and sad and broken, and for one piercing, unforgettable moment, the truth is so close, so immediate, and yet entirely, unavoidably obsolete.


	12. (TWELVE) ???, ????, ???

Arthur used to hear it all the time.

It’s a turn of phrase. _Don’t believe the half of it._

He tries not to think into things too much now, so he doesn’t need to believe anything at all.

He left London with ten grand. After much persuasion, he gave ten of it to a reluctant Niall so he could get himself a place in London. He buys a red rucksack and gives it to Gemma to store twenty of it under his childhood bed. He splits ten between a few different charities, one for whales, one for sheep, one for aro/ace people, all anonymous donations. He puts two grand in an envelope and sends it to the farm, writing ‘Dear Lilo, it’s time for that gap year. All the love H x’. He doesn’t add a return address.

Arthur goes to France. 

It seems natural that’s where he’d end up. He spends a little time in Paris, just wandering, and then blows five of the ten grand he took with him in a month by yachting around the south with some people he met when he woke up drunk on the beach in Antibes. He drinks champagne every day and gets a tan and the mud under his fingernails is replaced by sand between his toes. 

He does everything he’s always wanted to do. He gets his nipple pierced and starts to grow his hair and gets five tattoos in two weeks. He buys twelve nice shirts and never does up the buttons. He’s living. He’s alive. Finally, _finally_ , the heavens have opened like they were supposed to years ago, like he’s always wished for, and instead of the musky drizzle he’s used to, he’s standing in a downpour of fulfilment. 

He doesn’t think about why doing these things on his own makes a pathetic, grey cloud of his lungs rather than a hurricane. He doesn’t think about why the rainy day spitting over his heart, after everything, is so sad. 

He doesn’t think about anything at all. 

 

&&

 

Étienne used to hear it all the time.

It’s a turn of phrase. _Don’t believe the half of it._

Truthfully, he can’t believe he ended up here. If you’d told him five years ago he’d be here, a gardener in Bretagne, he’d have barked a laugh in your face. 

Yet here he is. 

The light wakes him up every morning. His cottage faces east and the curtains are white gauze from the market – it’s a nightmarish combination, but he sort of likes being awoken like that, with a crackling orange behind his eyelids and a wince instead of a stretch. Sometimes he smokes a cigarette before he gets out of bed, and then he’ll laugh at himself for being such an awful, unironic parody of himself. 

The Bellanger’s garden is challenging enough to take up most of the day. There’s a pond at the bottom, with carp and lily-pads and tall reeds, and a small, almost unmanageable rose garden, and a sweeping flowerbed arranged around a loveseat, and acres of temperamental grass. He finds his shoulder hurts if he’s hunched over for too long, so he takes to lying down on the grass and staring up at the sky every few hours or so, letting the hard surface settle it. The children come and sit with him when they’re bored and want someone to entertain them; Étienne suspects Claire might be sweet on him, which is awkward seeing as she’s sixteen and overly-aware of her herself, clearly regarding Etienne as some kind of dark enigma.

Still, she and Nathan and Théo don’t care about his asperities, don’t bother to question his weird habits and funny quirks. They laughingly call him a pirate because of the fading scar on his cheek. They accept his quiet manner and gentle speech, his reluctance to ever come up to the house when the Bellanger’s throw one of their parties. They don’t care that his accent sometimes slips and that he’s seemingly so happy being such a loner, even as young as he is.

They’re his friends in the saddest, loneliest, most innocent way.

It’s almost too good to be true. He still can’t believe it, even as he wakes up now, light in his eyes, heart in his throat.

 

-

 

He doesn’t find Zayn in normal things.

He finds pieces of his school and uni flings in old photographs, films, foods, fuck it, even certain cigarettes. He finds them in bouts of sexual frustration and moments of loneliness, when he remembers the arch of their easy smile or the hopeful tug of his own heart.

All of that can be quantified, written down, scooped up and shoved under the floorboards, but what can’t is his relationship with Zayn. Instead, he finds him elsewhere.

Not in the shower steam, but in the tremble in his hands when he considers writing ‘Hi’ with his finger and can’t bear it. Not in jazz, not in a certain song, but the way his head turns so fast when he hears it wafting through the garden like smoke, that his heart feels like it flips upside down. 

Not in the sky, but in the way that he’ll smile, sometimes, and dip his face to the floor.

 

-

 

After three months with the Bellangers, they buy him a roll of film for his camera.

He didn’t take a single picture when he was in the south, back when he was Arthur, not even when he found himself on a yacht with the Prince of Dubai. 

His chest feels tight.

‘Merci,’ he says throatily, smiling even when Claire gets overexcited and starts proclaiming it was all her idea. 

Later, when he slips the film in and lets the weight of Zayn’s camera press against his palms, Claire asks if she can take the first picture. 

He lets her have it. Life’s too short to say no. 

 

\- 

 

During his last days, Étienne gets a tattoo.

Or rather, he gets tattoos. He goes with Margot, the girl from the bakery with a nose ring and crooked teeth, and she holds his hand. They kiss sometimes – once or twice, she stayed the whole night and they kissed for hours and hours, until the light hit them – and they hold hands almost all of the time. He’s not sure what that means, but when he considers investigating it, opaque gloomy corners of him are roused to remind him that it means nothing at all. 

He gets two tattoos, matching swallows on his chest, flying towards each other.

‘Liberté,’ he explains, squeezing Margot’s hand. 

She takes a picture of his chest later, when it’s just getting light again.

 

-

 

Étienne has one more thing to do before he leaves France.

The school is the stuff of preppy dreams, a cobbled nightmare of hormones and uniform and screeching teachers. Girls literally poke their heads out of towering dormitories and gawk at him as he strides through the courtyard; when one of them wolf whistles, Étienne holds his hand up to the sun and scrunches his face in a smile.

His sisters are small and fidgety, fiddling with their hair and squirming in their seats, just like he does. Ivy, the older girl, has gone for the bleached look and enthusiastically remodelled her eyebrows, but Isadora is all dark curls and wide, unassuming mouth.

‘Our dad’s gone to prison forever because of you,’ is the first thing Ivy says, glaring at him. 

‘Not exactly because of me,’ Étienne says, coughing into his fist. ‘He did some really bad things.’

Neither of them reply. Isadora picks at a nail polish stain on her school shirt.

‘I’m sorry,’ Étienne says, pinching at the underside of his knees as he sits on his hands. ‘I – I want to do what’s right by you, if you’ll let me. You’re my sisters.’ That doesn’t draw a response either. He gulps and inhales shakily. ‘You know you have a niece. My – I mean, our sister, Gemma, she has a daughter.’

Ivy looks up at him sharply, eyebrows raised in surprise. Isadora’s mouth drops open, but it drifts to a close after glancing at her sister.

‘How old is she?’ Ivy asks slowly.

‘Six. Her name’s Joni. She likes horses.’ Étienne smiles, biting at his lip. ‘Gem’s the best mum ever. She half raised me, after Mum left. She’s dead cool, Joni’s so lucky. She lets Joni lick the bowl and everything.’

Isadora smiles and then bites at her nails. Ivy leans forward in her seat, eyes wide.

‘Mum’s gonna be in prison too,’ Ivy says, voice wobbling. ‘She said she might be in prison by Christmas.’

Étienne swallows, and for the first time, he can’t hold her gaze. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ His voice drops. ‘She was my mum too, you know.’

Ivy doesn’t respond to that. ‘We might have to drop out of school.’

He shakes his head, eyelashes fluttering. ‘I’ll pay for it.’

‘How? With what?’

‘I just will.’

There’s a long pause. Étienne’s heart has swept through his chest with the strength of a tank, and his shoulders sag as he runs a hand through his hair, head dipped. 

‘Kit?’

He looks up, dazed.

‘Yes, Isadora?’

‘What does your tattoo say? The one –’ She points at his wrist. 

He holds it up to the light, twisting it so Ivy can see it too, and smiles gently. ‘Cacoethes. It means, _the desire to do something inadvisable._ ’

Isadora leans forward to admire it, sitting on her hands just like he was. 

‘Cool,’ she says. Ivy nods.

At once, he’s struck for the first time by the weight of being an older brother. Perhaps it should feel heavy, but he’s always liked looking after people, and he’s always revelled in the tentative adoration that comes with respect.

Ivy and Isadora blink at him expectantly, hanging on his word.

 

&&

 

 

Kit used to hear it all the time.

It’s a turn of phrase. _Don’t believe the half of it._

‘I can’t believe this,’ he says to Niall, grinning almost painfully. There’s a whole living room full of people, including two very tanned and freckled men in Louis and Liam, who clap Kit on the back and scream things in his ear along the lines of _lying is a sin you twat!_ and _can’t believe you’re cool enough to be attacked by a gang leader!_

Kit just rolls his eyes and reminds himself it’s not worth commenting on the matching anklets and the matching bro tats, however hilarious. 

Crammed into Niall’s little Hoxton flat, all twenty of them watch the Bake Off final. Niall signed an NDA and so none of them know if he wins, not even Niall’s new squad of cool London mates who seem to have all collaborated to have the most intriguing, diverse array of haircuts Kit’s ever seen. They all have fun names too; Kit’s sure he hears a Quentin. ‘I should add that to my repertoire,’ he says, not entirely joking.

Niall comes third. The showstopper – a summer themed wedding cake – isn’t iced perfectly and Paul isn’t keen on the cinnamon undertones in the middle tier. Everyone makes up for it by shouting ‘Fuck you, Paul!’ and throwing napkins at the TV screen.

Kit’s expecting them all to start getting heartily drunk right after, but instead, Niall flicks over to BBC2 and they catch the start of the accompanying show, _An Extra Slice_. Niall’s there, beaming in a crisply ironed shirt to rapturous studio applause (Gemma’s informed him that there’s been much talk of Niall becoming the nation’s new sweetheart) and he sits down with the panel like he belongs there, laughing his way through the interview. 

‘I wanted to do it for people like me,’ he says towards the end, smile not faltering once.

‘People like you?’ Jo prompts searchingly, and Kit’s heart swells so big, it catches in his throat. Niall presses close next to him, squeezes his knee.

‘Well, I’d never seen anyone like me on TV before,’ Niall says. ‘And I thought there should be. We all know what the lovely people of Mullingar have told _The Sun_ about me, but I just thought you should all know that I’m not angry or embarrassed. I won’t let those fuckers rile me up.’ That prompts a laugh in the studio, but in the living room, everyone’s silent. ‘I’m not ashamed of being who I am. I’ve learned life’s too short not to be open about it, either.’

He says it so gently, so sincerely, that it can do nothing but settle like a familiar touch, and as he shrugs as if to say _who cares?_ , the audience laughs, as though agreeing that nobody should at all. Jo says, ‘That’s lovely, Niall,’ with a genuine warmth, and Kit finds himself in tears. 

‘That’s perfect, Niall,’ he says.

‘Put a sock in it, you old sap,’ Niall laughs, shoving a beer in Kit’s face, but he kisses him on the cheek all the same.

Nothing is perfect, and most of the time life is far from it, but sometimes, Kit’s learned, in some small corners of the universe, with the right people and the right luck, you might just catch a glimpse of it.

 

-

 

‘We have a present for you, Styles,’ Louis says the next afternoon, back on Niall’s doorstep with a grey smile with Liam at his side.

‘Or, not Styles,’ says Liam. ‘Watson. Soz.’

‘Whatever,’ Louis says exasperatedly. ‘Can’t keep up with you, Hannah Montana.’ He shoves Liam aside and draws his hand from behind his back. He’s holding a lead, and at the end of it, looking begrudging and unimpressed and done with everyone’s shit, as always, is Bess. 

‘She missed you,’ says Louis. ‘We think it might be time for her to go into retirement now.’

Kit cries again.

 

-

 

They meet again at a café. It’s the tail-end of the afternoon, thin and bright and wavering, and they’re still playing Christmas songs on the radio as Kit sips at a lukewarm coffee.

A girl working behind the counter is wearing the same jumper Gemma bought Isadora for Christmas. ‘I hope you don’t mind that it’s from Debenhams,’ Gem had said with a sniff, looking mildly anxious as Ivy had plucked it from her sister’s lap for inspection. ‘I know you’re probably used to fancier stuff.’

Dora wore it every day until she went back to school, rain or shine, even when Granny began to suggest she might wear the sleeves down.

Zayn walks in now with his nose buried in a scarf, cello on his back. He nearly knocks out the man behind when he slings it off his shoulder, mumbling apologies and patting the man on the back so many times, it’s almost funny.

There’s a moment of silence as Zayn busily shrugs off his coat and peels off gloves, pretending to care deeply about folding them together just right.

Finally, he looks at Kit, though, and the brightness in the room seems to flicker, dimming then bursting, right in the arc of Kit’s pupils.

‘Hi,’ Zayn says eventually, after staring for so long things begin to border on awkward. Kit opens his mouth, but before he can say a word – ‘Your hair’s so long.’

‘Yes.’ Kit touches the ends of it and his lips draw up into a tiny, curious smile. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Um. Yeah. Yeah.’ They blink at each other. Zayn’s nose is bitten red from the cold at its tip and his hair is shaven so short, Kit can see his scalp, but his eyelashes are just as long and devastating as usual and his mouth still makes Kit want to cry. ‘How are you?’ 

‘Okay. You’re playing the cello again?’

Zayn’s mouth twists into an approximation of a smile. ‘Not entirely,’ he says, lifting his hand so that his sleeve drops past his wrist. For the first time, Kit’s privy to the distorted, ugly skin of his hand, burned beyond repair. Zayn’s tried to cover it with an intricate mandala tattoo, but it’s unavoidable and Kit can’t stop himself from reaching out and tugging at his fingers, drawing his hand closer to stare at it.

Zayn tries to pull it away. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why?’

His fingers flex. ‘It’s. You know. Ugly.’

Kit looks at him. ‘I don’t think so.’

There’s a sinewy pause, one that pulses like a bruise between them until Kit lets go of his fingers and sits back, brushing hair out of his eyes. 

‘I teach kids on estates, mostly Muslim kids, how to play classical instruments,’ Zayn says slowly, not looking away once. He smiles. ‘All sounds very noble. Mostly it’s a laugh.’

Kit whistles slowly and grins when Zayn dips his head. ‘Not a policeman anymore, then?’

‘Got sacked long ago, mate. That was a bit of a cock up.’

‘A bit, yeah.’ 

Zayn shrugs and so does Kit, lips wobbling to keep straight-faced until they both laugh. 

Kit finishes his coffee and Zayn orders an espresso which he downs in one, explaining he had an early start for work this morning. He tells Kit that Waliyha has a boyfriend now and his mum works at a new school, and in turn, Kit updates him on Louis and Liam, and both of them spend a good quarter of an hour discussing Niall and his admirable culinary and social achievements. Kit reaches a hand to play with his hair and Zayn admires Kit’s tattoos, smiling dizzyingly at the one on his wrist. 

Kit’s knee finds Zayn’s unwittingly under the table. He gulps the flare of some paralysing emotion away when Zayn doesn’t immediately retract his leg.

‘Do you want to come back to mine?’ Zayn asks as they exit under the chime of a little bell, his face half obscured by the scarf. ‘I don’t live far from here.’

‘Yeah, all right,’ says Kit, shrugging like it’s easy, ignoring the _thud thud thud_ in his chest.

Zayn smiles. ‘We can make eggs.’

Kit feels the flare again. ‘Only if they’re poached, this time.’

 

-

 

It’s dark by the time Kit considers leaving.

Zayn has all the old words on his new wall, as well as some new ones. Kit presses his fingers to the ink and remembers the letters Zayn wrote him, pretending to be his mother. He has to close his eyes to remember how to breathe.

‘All right?’ Zayn asks softly, pausing in the noisy act of making tea.

Kit’s lungs rattle. ‘Some of it was true, right, Zayn? Some of it was true?’

Behind him, Zayn puts down the kettle; Kit hears the slosh of the water, the clang of the kettle hitting the counter. ‘Most of it was,’ Zayn says quietly. ‘Everything I gave to you was true. The only things that weren’t were the things I didn’t say.’

Kit nods, pressing his thumb to the big _E_ of _Eucatastrophe_. ‘Tell me something true, then.’

There’s a long pause. ‘My name is Zain with an _I_. I had to change it when I started working undercover, so they couldn’t find me on the Internet.’

‘Do you prefer it with a _Y_ now?’

‘I think so. It’s cooler.’

‘Is Malik your surname?’

‘It’s Mian.’

Kit nods again. When he turns around, Zayn’s spooning the teabags from the mugs with a shaky hand, face illuminated by the blinking kitchen light. His flat is near the top of a tower block in Vauxhall; behind him, Kit can see the Thames all lit up, tracing the outlines of his beautiful face like stage lighting, like he’s being presented before an audience for their worthy admiration.

But it’s just him.

Just Kit.

 

-

 

Kit spends his twenty-fifth birthday like the past two birthdays: with Niall and Bess, eating cake, watching _Project Runway_. 

For the first time, though, he’s perfectly content, and it’s with a light heart that he presses his face to Niall’s shoulder and realises that he wouldn’t change a thing. 

 

-

 

He finds quite quickly that he’s become too anxious and jittery for fashion photography; one week shadowing a man Niall knows at London Fashion Week ends with Kit sitting in an alleyway smoking his way through a packet of cigarettes and babbling nonsense to Gemma on the phone. Everything is shouty and fast-paced and bitchy; everyone wants to know who he is and where he’s come from and why he has that scar on his face and when will he get that coffee, please, and Kit’s heart can’t stand even one more person barking his name with enough aggression that his heart leaps to his throat, hands reaching for something solid to keep him standing.

Even the tube is a trial, some days. Even a queue for the cash point or a food show with Niall or a packed cinema can sometimes feel unbearable. Some days he loves the buzz, the energy, the _life_ , and some days he misses everything he used to hate. 

‘I need to get out of London,’ he says to Zayn one evening, as they eat Chinese takeaway out of the box on Zayn’s living room floor. 

‘Had enough of Niall’s sofa?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

Kit looks up at him, sucking a noodle between his teeth. ‘Why?’

Zayn chews slowly, negotiating his fork around the corners of the box. ‘Well. Maybe I’ll come too, one day.’ 

Kit stares at him until his eyes go blurry.

He ends up staying that night, shooting Niall a text to feed Bess and awkwardly accepting a clean pair of cotton pyjamas and a baggy Prince t-shirt from Zayn. He lies next to Zayn in bed and blinks at the inky sky through a chink in the blind. His heart is hammering unpleasantly, right under his the thin stretch of his neck, as though whispering _hello, hello, hello._

‘Kit?’ Zayn murmurs. Somehow, he feels so far away.

‘Yes?’

‘You know when we spoke last year, outside the hospital?’

‘Mm.’

‘That was my birthday.’

‘Oh,’ Kit says, voice breaking. ‘Was it really?’

‘Yeah. I just thought you should know, maybe.’

There’s a long pause. Time is measured by Zayn’s breathing, which he does insistently, through his mouth, and Kit can’t be sure whether he’s breathing fast or if time is passing slowly.

‘Kit?’

‘Yes, Zayn?’

‘You said you needed to…’ He trails off leadingly, and when Kit doesn’t reply, he clears his throat. ‘Do you feel like you found yourself yet?’

He thinks about it. ‘In a way,’ Kit replies. 

_Maybe something’s missing_ , the spaces between the rungs of his ribs seem to sigh. _It’s okay to want somebody else._

He thinks of Zayn’s word of the week – Supernal, _relating to the sky or the heavens_ – just as he closes his eyes.

 

-

 

No matter where he ends up, home has always been Holmes Chapel. His grandparents’ house, a solid and unthreatening 1940s corner house better understood as a stuffy museum of Kit’s childhood which, as it does for everyone, contains episodes of mistakes, ill-judged behaviour and embarrassing blunders he’d rather forget, as viciously remembered as if they were nailed to the wall like photographs. He only began to miss it, miss here, in the violent nostalgia he often felt at the Tomlinson farm, and now, as he lies in bed, wriggling his toes under the quilt and the weight of Bess, various scantily clad popstars and football players and tennis stars gazing down at him, he feels the unchallenging simplicity of home. 

His bedroom is the same as it’s always been. He can hear a tractor, distantly, and the dog next door barking. He can hear his granny singing as she hangs up the washing, listening to Heart radio. The room is criminally bright, the curtains doing nothing to shield anything, and Kit blinks sleepily at the fading images of Peter Rabbit dancing along the hem. He’d wanted to burn the curtains for a good ten years. 

He loves them now.

Everything is the same as he trots downstairs for breakfast and writes his granny a message with the alphabet magnets on the fridge as he waits for the kettle to boil, even if Gemma and Joni have moved out now, and Grandpa is gone. He swallows that pang of upset away and arranges ‘love you x’ around the postcards and primary school drawings, smiling even when the X won’t stick.

He’s given what feels like a royal tour around the village, because despite having last been here at Christmas, he hadn’t summoned the strength then to cross the boundary that the post office marks, like Checkpoint Charlie in post-war Germany, into the social hub of the village – rather depressingly, a cross-roads flagged by two separate pubs, a greengrocer’s, and a bookies.

Kit feels somewhat of a celebrity as he takes his grandmother’s arm and smiles self-consciously at all of the people he’s grown up around, who stare at him unabashedly and whisper within earshot, as though he’s a famous person or a local criminal. No doubt he was assumed to have got someone pregnant or emigrated to Australia given his sudden and unexplained post-graduation disappearance; that is the pinnacle of excitement and drama here, and he wouldn’t be the first or last to suffer that fate. He gives a bashful shrug when they walk into The Royal Oak and someone shouts hello at him with disarming enthusiasm.

He holds his palm out for Bess to lick, which she does loyally, as always. 

‘Want to go and get me a half bitter?’ his Granny asks, rooting around in her little purse; Kit squeezes her wrist to gesture she should put it away. 

‘Course, Granny.’

‘You remember Barry, don’t you, Kit Kat? Are you sure you’re okay to order?’

Kit frowns, as though to say her concern is hardly necessary, but in fact his heart is racing as he trots to the bar and orders a half bitter, a lager, a bowl of water for Bess and a packet of pork scratchings in a shaky voice, avoiding eye contact with the man who has happily served him alcohol since he was barely seventeen.

The air feels sticky and thick with the same lustful, bored, covetous smog which he’d valiantly sat through during his adolescence and fought his way out of when he went to university. A longing for a city, for people with piercings and fun haircuts and tropical, fantastical values, such as being “street-wise” and an appreciative aestheticism for things beyond nice hills and a particularly pretty cow. The creatures of this new horizon, that brave new world, have always stirred his interest, but now his gaze flickers up as Barry hands him his pork scratchings, and he finds he is one of those pierced, tattooed, hazy-eyed metropolitans. The illicit episodes of sex and drugs and fear and anxiety and alternative sexuality drape over his shoulders like the electric blue coat he bought from a dingy shop in Manchester when he was sixteen that his grandpa branded ‘hideous’ and his maths teacher ‘inappropriate’.

They don’t care. His world isn’t to be envied. Barry smiles and says, ‘Nice to see you, Kit,’ and Kit’s heart thumps unpleasantly as he smiles back.

Where do you go when everywhere new is too much, and home’s not enough?

 

-

 

Kit sits comfortably in the sharp glow of artificial light and watches as Zayn makes a clumsy, ineloquent speech, trying his best to be inspiring which is more endearing than it is rousing. He smiles loyally amongst the kids’ families and begrudging siblings, and senses in the crowd around him a mixture of pride and nervous, pre-emptively embarrassed energy, a distrust of classical instruments in general and a resignation to the fact that they’ll have to pretend this is good once their loved ones are done.

It’s not wholly bad. One kid in particular is great, the girl on violin at the front who stares at Zayn intently, as though he might lead them into battle. Zayn awkwardly bobs in front of them, doing his best to conduct; his shirt is untucked at the back. Kit’s heart feels singed with the vibrating ache of possession, as if they do belong to each other. 

He hesitates to think _still. Still_ belong to each other.

‘Was it okay?’ Zayn asks anxiously later, during one of many vigorous post-mortems of the entire concert from start to finish. The lapse in tempo during the third song is debated at length. Kit smiles and tries his best to look exasperated, but he knows he fails spectacularly when Zayn stares at him for just a little too long, eyes round and searching.

‘You really care about this?’ Kit asks as Zayn gathers up their empty pizza boxes and beer bottles, stacking them in his arms in a childlike, innocently competent way. 

Zayn looks at him. ‘Yeah. More than anything.’

Kit nods and takes a sip of his beer. ‘That’s good.’

‘I’ve realised I can’t make anything less shitty,’ Zayn says quietly, blinking with his catwalk eyelashes. ‘I can’t stop the world from turning. I can’t fight negative energy with negative energy. I can only try my best to make corners of it better.’

He smiles softly when Kit just stares at him, and turns towards the kitchen, shoulders curved under the baggy fabric of his t-shirt.

‘You are.’

‘I am what?’

‘Making corners of it better.’

Kit smiles. Zayn doesn’t say anything, but as he negotiates the pizza boxes into the bin, Kit can see from the pull in his cheek that he is too.

 

-

 

They end up having sex after a night out in Shoreditch with Niall and his new friends, celebrating Kit’s new job.

It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just … not good. They’re both too drunk, and what starts as hilariously funny – struggling to pull each other’s clothes off with snatching, impatient fingers, wincing when their teeth clack, huffing _ouch!_ when Zayn presses Kit to the doorframe and it clips Kit’s bad shoulder – becomes almost desperately unfunny, far too quickly. Kit finds after almost no time at all that he’s so hard he can’t see straight, way too frantic to get fucked after almost two years of relying only on his fingers, and voicing that in his best sultry voice, hooded eyelids and everything, only has the effect of heightening Zayn’s anxiety.

‘I just – wait, I just –’

‘Zayn, Zayn, it’s fine, come on –’

‘But I don’t wanna hurt you, babe, I just – am I doing this right? Is it – are you sure, because … yeah? Oh – no? Yeah?’

When Kit wakes up the next morning, Zayn’s already awake, sitting at the foot of the bed. His bare back is to Kit, smoke curling in an elegant, artful line above his head, broad shoulders tapering to an impossibly tiny waist. The light in the room is like dishwater, barely transparent, and Zayn looks like a painting. Kit makes a few pointed snuffling noises and Zayn turns, smiling sheepishly and stubbing his cigarette against the doorframe.

‘That’s gross.’

‘Sorry,’ says Zayn unapologetically. This reverberates between them for quite some time, before Zayn says again, with entirely different meaning, ‘Sorry.’

Kit twists his lips together thoughtfully. He’s struck, at once, by a number of things Zayn has said to him. _Are you? Did we make a mistake? We’re from the same star._

He reaches out for Zayn’s hand and tugs, tugs, tugs until Zayn’s tentatively on top of him, doing his best to hold himself by his elbows so his weight isn’t resting on Kit at all.

Kit places both hands on either side of Zayn’s face and brushes his hair away from his eyes with both thumbs, gazing at him warmly. 

‘Did you sleep with anyone when I was away?’

Zayn shakes his head, cheeks heating.

He doesn’t know how far this thing with Zayn will go, if it’ll gain enough momentum to lift it out of this Saharan wasteland of delicate potential or if it’ll burn out, or if his new job at the animal centre in Brighton will work out, or if the mostly patched up hole in his chest will ever get infected and mangled and grow again. He doesn’t know if he’ll be alive in ten years or where he might live or who he’ll be. He doesn’t know a thing. But right now, this bed, this boy, this breath in his lungs – he knows this. He inhales slowly, stealing it from Zayn, and it only makes him feel lighter. 

He kisses him sincerely, deeply, all tongue, and Zayn’s fingers find Kit’s hair, flexing against his scalp, until one of them pulls back.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’

‘I want you to fuck me,’ says Kit.

Zayn makes a noise, a sound in his throat caught between surprise and longing. ‘I did. I tried.’

Kit laughs. ‘Well try again.’ He bumps his forehead against Zayn’s. ‘God loves a trier.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’ His thumb strokes against Kit’s temple, and his mouth falters hesitantly before he says, ‘Is it lame that I really want to take you on a date?’

Kit smiles. ‘No, I'd like that.' He bites his lip. 'Our first date.’

‘Yeah. We can go for eggs, somewhere good.’

‘Okay.’

Zayn’s gaze is so warm, so heavy, but it’s troubled, like the sky after a storm. ‘Why have you forgiven me?’ he asks gently, gaze troubled and searching as it crosses Kit’s face.

‘Because you asked me to.’

Zayn shakes his head. ‘No I didn’t.’

Kit turns his head away. He doesn’t why. His eyes drift to Zayn’s burned hand, fisted in the sheet beside his head, and he doesn’t know why any of these things have happened at all. He was right, a year ago at the hospital. There are no truths. There are no answers.

There’s only life, and he can only live it. That’s what he’s learned in all of this.

Everything is stretched out in front of him like that hill at the farm, with the winding scarf of a river and the white cotton sheep blobs, an abstract pastoral painting that somehow he’s apart of, but instead of just the hill, now he can see the whole horizon, and instead of frightening, overwhelming, it makes him feel calm. 

‘There’re so many shitty things wrong with the world, Zayn,’ Kit replies, tracing Zayn’s mandala tattoo with the tip of his finger. ‘I can’t push away something as lovely as this.’

‘You’re a better person than me.’

Kit frowns. ‘No I’m not.’ He looks back up at Zayn and assumes a petulant moue, so naturally, Zayn has to roll his eyes and kiss him. ‘I’m just tired of looking for things outside of myself to prove that I’m alive. You’re right, it was stupid.’

‘I never said –’

‘Yes you did. And it’s okay.’ He reaches for Zayn’s face to smooth the pucker between his eyebrows and smiles softly. ‘I’ve got so much life in me, it’s like I’m about to burst,’ he whispers, like it’s a secret. ‘I’ve got so much feeling and it’d be stupid not to let myself have it. I’m so alive.’

Zayn dips his head and lets their noses brush for a long, warm moment before they kiss again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says into Kit’s mouth, meaning it.

Kit wraps his arms around Zayn’s neck, presses his nose to Zayn’s stubbly cheek. ‘You know that _you’re_ the only person who ever has to forgive the bad things you’ve done. Nobody else, not really. If you hold yourself accountable for things forever, you can only ever be numb. You’ve got to let yourself live.’

Zayn looks at him, and his gaze is so unwavering, so undeniably certain, that Kit thinks that even if this doesn’t last forever, or for a year, or for a month, or till tomorrow, this warmth they’ve created, this glow, might stretch and bend and spread and sink until it wraps around Kit’s assigned portion of the world for eternity. Whole galaxies are made in a moment, lots would argue, with a big burst of energy, with a bang.

‘Keep looking up, yeah?’ Zayn asks, mouth twitching at the corners.

‘Yeah,’ says Kit, ‘keep looking up.’

Zayn’s gaze drifts to Kit’s mouth, leaning forward.

Bang. 

 

&&&

 

He used to hear it all the time.

It’s a turn of phrase. _Don’t believe the half of it._

He’s starting to see the flaws in that, after everything.

It’s been years since he was here. The cliff is the same, although the sky is clearer than it ever was when he came up here to jump, fabric-softener blue and so bright he’s scrunching up his face in a squint, shielding his face with a palm to his eyebrows.

The rucksack is light as he weighs it testily in his palm, squeezing his fingers around the strap. The original was fraying, had holes all along the bottom and by the zip, but this one is like new thanks to misuse.

All that’s in there now is one small, crisp £20 note.

 _Don’t believe the half of it._ He’s not sure about that.

Maybe believe in everything. 

A long time ago, he thought growing up was progressing from innocence to enlightenment, saying goodbye to the gold-tinted lens of childhood and resigning yourself to the monochrome monotony of adulthood. But instead, perhaps it’s pushing on. Not allowing yourself to cry even though you’d quite like to. Giving away your last cigarette and not even feeling reluctant, not even considering that you might not want to. Staying out for another drink and twenty more minutes of chat, swallowing that yawn. Knowing that you are as strong as you’ll let yourself become, and the way to be strongest is to know, firmly, unapologetically, that you’re a good person because you want to be. He’ll be a good dad, one day, because he knows exactly how to be a bad one. He’ll be happy, now, because he knows he can.

He draws his arm back, until he feels the click and pull in his rubbish shoulder, until his bicep muscles tense and he can feel the breeze against the fabric of the bag, and then he throws his weight forward, sweeping his arm, releasing it with a huff right over the edge of the cliff. It drops so quickly, he nearly doesn’t see it get caught in a small ripple of a wave, hanging at the surface for a moment as though allowing him to catch a final glimpse of it, before it’s gone.

He stares at the water for a long time, breathing gently, until he hears his name called. 

‘Coming,’ he replies, swiping at his face with the back of his palm.

He looks up at the sky, holding his face to it, like he did all those years ago. The salt air still scratches at the corners of his mouth, stinging like salt and vinegar crisps, the breeze still catches at his hair and tickles his throat. It’s just the same, although this time, he doesn’t close his eyes. He sees the sky in all its vast inescapability, and then he turns away and walks back to the car, back to someone he loves, with his hands in his pockets and life in his chest and he keeps looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I do so hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know if you did, and thank you so much for reading. :~)


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